


SCP Containment Breach: Markiplier's Escape

by Rowan_Oakley



Category: Lordminion777 - Fandom, SCP - Containment Breach, markiplier - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Horror, Body Horror, Horror, Markiplier - Freeform, Psychological Drama, Psychological Horror, Psychological Trauma, Survival Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-26
Updated: 2018-12-30
Packaged: 2019-05-13 23:50:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 18
Words: 41,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14758637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rowan_Oakley/pseuds/Rowan_Oakley
Summary: Mark Fischbach (AKA YouTube's Markiplier) doesn't have the strongest faith in his intelligence. So when he is dropped into the middle of a Facility during a serious containment breach and told to escape using his wits, he believes he's in serious trouble.





	1. Chapter 1

It all started with an alarm, but one that sounded very different from the fire alarm in the block of flats where Mark lived.

That said, it was familiar, but for a moment Mark couldn't place it. Instead he looked dazedly at where he'd had a pile of laundry just a second ago, wondering where it had gone. It was meant to be right in front of him, it shouldn't have been able to disappear.

"The site is experiencing multiple Euclid and Keter containment breaches!" said a distorted voice over the speaker system. "Full site lock down initiated."

_Oh, that's what it is - it's the SCP Containment Breach alarm!_ he thought, pleased for an instant that he'd recognised it. But then he looked around as new confusion dawned. "How the hell did I get here?" _And why does it look like this?_ He'd played SCP Containment Breach many times as a video game but this... this was utterly immersive. It looked like he was _in_ it.

Was he hallucinating? Well, if he was, then the pile of clothes was still in front of him. He tried grabbing a handful, but felt nothing. He felt further; the sofa they'd been laid across was gone, too.

Only seconds before this Mark had been in his apartment, folding T-shirts and waiting to go out and meet Wade for a beer. But now? Now, with no apparent transition between the two he was in a high-ceilinged room and surrounded by plain white walls, with everything rendered gloomy from a lack of natural daylight. It looked for all the world like one of the games he played as a Let's Player. He looked up and saw a guard on a balcony shoot at SCP-173, the living concrete sculpture Mark had nick-named Billy in his play-through.

For just a few moments he was rooted to the spot, staring at the scene like a rabbit in headlights. The guard rattled off shot after shot but Billy just stood there, taking it like it was nothing. Then the lights failed for a fraction of a second, flickering and landing everyone in darkness. Mark heard a sickening crunch. He winced and felt his neck twinge in sympathy for the guard. When the lights came back on the guard was nowhere to be seen, fallen out of sight behind the gallery wall, he could only assume. Billy had moved.

Mark looked around quickly. He was the only person left in the room so it was inevitable that Billy would come for him. _Go,_ Mark thought in fear. _Just get out of here._

This couldn't be real, but Mark was too scared to stand around thinking about that. He ran to the doorway on his right, slapping the Close button as he stepped through.

He already knew the next steps: grab a gas mask, a walkie-talkie, some batteries, and whatever else he could get from the long storage room with the filing cabinets. Settling into auto-pilot and worried by the realism around him - the quality of the sound of Billy's scraping against the floor, the temperature just nagging at uncomfortably cold, the rubbery smell of the gas mask - he grabbed what he could and turned to leave.

SCP-173 appeared outside the door, blocking the way and watching him with multiple green and black eyes. Its weird three-pointed mouth gaped loosely open and its underdeveloped arms were outstretched as if to reach for him.

"Oh, hiiii!" growled Mark, his voice rough with terror. He hesitated for just a second as the fear gripped him before he squeezed between the doorway and the statue, making damn sure he kept his eyes open and focussed on the SCP the whole time. He reached the door to the next room and closed it, blinked to refresh his eyes, and backed up some more for good measure. Whatever he did, he knew he could _not_ afford to let Billy out of his sight even for the time it took to blink. "Don't you open that door, you a-hole!"

Billy opened the door and froze as it entered his line of sight again. That freezing was its only weakness and his only defence against it, and that was far too tenuous a protection for Mark's taste.

"Screw you! Screw you!" He backward-ran through a second doorway and closed it, and only then dared to turn his back to see where he'd gone.

He saw that he was at the crossways. The central column was at the centre where he would have expected it to be, corroded and orange with rust, and enclosing several sets of ventilation ducts, each ending with two large vent grilles on each face. A dark metal grid made up the flooring under his feet and diffusers in the corners of the room spewed tear gas. He tried to pull the gas mask on, cursed, removed his glasses and pulled it into place. He looked short-sightedly around but didn't see anyone - or anything - dangerous. Maybe now he could just take a second to work out what had happened. Billy didn't usually appear in this room, if Mark remembered the workings of the game right, so he felt he could afford to take a minute to figure out what was going on.

It was a real place, that much was for sure. The railings were cold and hard, and this room looked exactly like the SCP Containment Breach crossways room as far as he remembered it. All of the rooms had so far, as much as the half-Korean could tell. _Is the building in Containment Breach based on a real place?_ he wondered. _Is that where I am?_

_How?_

Then he noticed his sleeve. Orange. And long. "Okay, that's weird," he muttered, examining it. "Could've sworn I put on a black T-shirt today. I don't even have anything orange with long sleeves."

_But the D-class prisoners in the game do..._

Mark looked down to see that he was, in fact, wearing a D-class jump suit. _Am I the D-class from the game?_ It was an insane notion, but right at the moment everything seemed insane. He felt for his hair and pulled a lock of it down in front of his face. It was red, the same red he'd had it for the past few weeks.

"O...kay," he repeated tentatively. "Well, at least I'm still me, I guess."

He walked around the central pillar to the opposite side of the crossways, his breath loud as the gas mask did its job. _Maybe I'm dreaming._ Well, the wisdom was that if you thought you were dreaming you were meant to pinch yourself and see if it hurt. Mark tried and decided he was definitely awake.

He checked his pockets. He'd stuffed the batteries and walkie-talkie in there in his earlier rush, but he found something else as well. He pulled it out and examined it.

_My cell phone._

He heard SCP-173 skittering around somewhere out of sight and decided he'd stood still long enough. He slotted a battery into the back of the walkie-talkie, checked that it switched on and headed over to the nearest doorway.

The next room he found himself was a circular tunnel. _Wait,_ he thought mid-stride. _Is this the place where..?_ Mark stopped dead, pulled the gas mask down so it hung around his neck and put his glasses on so he could see more clearly, then gingerly took one more step forward.

As he'd expected from his knowledge of the game, everything went dark. Then the lights came back on again.

Mark had frozen in the darkness - and kept still even when it came back on and he saw Billy blocking his path. He knew where he had to go, and it wasn't back. His heart beating hard in his ears, he went forward, toward the neck-breaking monster. "Don't kill me don't kill me don't kill me!" he babbled as he crammed himself past the statue, his back to the wall, close enough to see the rough texture of Billy's surface and smell its blood-and-faeces stench. He got past, backward-ran to the opposite end with his eyes on SCP-173 the whole time and felt for the button on the wall to open it.

His eyes were starting to feel dry: he needed to blink. But if he did, SCP-173 was going to snap his neck.

"Oh crap! Oh crap! Where is it?"

He couldn't find the button.

He needed to blink!

Mark stared at SCP-173 and tried working the muscles under his eyes - maybe he could stimulate his tear ducts, give himself another few seconds?

Billy stood as still as, well, a statue, but Mark knew it was waiting...

"Come on! Where's the God-damned button?!"

He tried feeling the wall behind him with just one hand and rubbing at the tear duct of his right eye. He couldn't afford to close his eyes! He didn't know how any of this was real but it felt real, and he was in too much of a panic to tempt fate and let himself blink.

_Oh, God damn!_ He had to blink! His vision was starting to go blurry from the dryness of his eyes. Rubbing his tear duct wasn't working...

He tried squinting his right eye to try and coat it just a little.

His breath caught in his throat as he had an idea. He blinked his right eye only, his left eye still open, dry and uncomfortable. Then he opened his right eye.

Billy stayed in place.

He blinked his left eye only and felt an overdue coating of moisture finally soothe it.

Billy didn't move.

_Oh, thank God..._

He single-blinked a little more, shaking with adrenaline the whole time. Eventually he started again to feel the wall behind him, touched his way along to the door, found the button from there and pressed it.

As the door slid open he stepped backwards, through much more slow and measured than he wanted to, and shut it.

It was over. He'd faced Billy and lived. Mark leaned against the wall, his blood loud in his ears, and sighed with relief.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mark Fischbach (AKA YouTube's Markiplier) doesn't have the strongest faith in his intelligence. So when he is dropped into the middle of a Facility during a serious containment breach and told to escape using his wits, he believes he's in serious trouble.

Mark may have dealt with Billy for the moment, but he couldn't afford to stop and rest. He knew from playing the game that he could barely stop for long enough to think. There were too many SCPs that might cross his path - or that he might run headlong into if he wasn't careful.

That was exactly the problem presented in the game: SCP stood for Special Containment Procedure, and every monster or object kept at the Facility had its own unique Procedure to keep it so that it couldn't be damaged, or more often, do damage. With the power down all over the Facility like this, _nothing_ was being contained. SCP-173 - Billy - was by no means the worst thing wandering about in the confines of this building.

"How the hell is this even happening?" Mark muttered, but disbelieving wasn't going to help - he was here and as far as he could see, he couldn't change that. "Come on Mark," he told himself in an authoritative voice that might have convinced someone else if they were with him, and might just convince him too if he didn't over think it, "let's get somewhere safe."

That was easier said than done, but he had an idea of where to go...

He broke away from the wall and set off. The game he was familiar with had randomly generated the layout of the Facility with each new play, to keep gamers like Mark guessing and to keep the game feeling fresh. So finding his way around meant a mix of trial and error.

He walked fast down a gloomy white corridor, trying to tread softly, and stopped as he heard something loud. Like metal against metal, or maybe metal on ceramic or glass. _Or some combination like that,_ he thought, listening intently for clues, his nerves chilled by the unfamiliarity of the sound.

There hadn't been anything like that noise in the game. _An environment like the game I can deal with. I think. But differences?_

He heard another clang. _What the hell_ is _that?_

He chose to go the other way. His legs practically carried him the other way without him consciously making the decision.

Mark emerged into a room with a big glass box inside, fitted with two CCTV cameras. He walked in and looked around. The lights were off on each camera. He knew what was meant to be inside - although it had probably left by now. SCP-372. Almost impossible to see even under the scrutiny of two CCTV units, truly impossible for a flawed human with a limit to his peripheral vision and blind spots in his eyes.

Mark crept back outside the glass box to look for useful bits and pieces on the unit beside, and found a crappy but functional sat-nav and a low-level key card. He pocketed them and left before SCP-372 decided it was hungry or got the notion to play cat and mouse. Whatever Mark might have suggested in his younger gaming days, he was more prone to being the mouse than the cat.

He walked on, but soon enough the idea of being chased gave him the creeps and he broke into a run. He ran through the red-lit corridor where Billy hung out quite often and was lucky enough for it not to be there, and into a dark T junction of corridors beyond.

From there he found the entrance to the Clockworks and went inside - and out of a habit he'd picked up from playing so much Containment Breach in the past, he shut the door behind him. He stood in the space and looked around, relieved to be safe at last.

Mostly safe, anyway. Radical Larry could still make an appearance. He scanned the shadows quickly for any sign of charred cadavers waiting to pounce, but no - Larry wasn't there.

"Make sure you stay away, Larry," Mark said quietly to the room. "I know how much you like popping out of walls. Bad habit, man. Bad habit."

The silence made Mark snap out of the bad case of the terrors he'd had for the past few minutes, and he took stock of where he was. The machine looked smaller than he'd imagined, now that he saw it in real life.

"So," he said, half to himself as he looked more closely at the words around the dial. "What's really going on here?"

It couldn't be real. Well, obviously it was real in some sense: Mark reached out and touched the clockwork machine's dull chassis. It was cold and definitely made of metal. On inspection the dial turned, although it was a little stiff. But was it _real,_ real?

_Of course not._

There had to be an explanation. Mark was famous for a few things, including having played a lot of SCP Containment Breach. Finding himself suddenly in the middle of one of his favourite video games - especially one that always got such a big scare reaction out of him - made a pretty awesome prank. In fact, now that he thought about it, he'd once heard of a prank where some guy had played a zombie shooter in an arcade, got hypnotised and then taken to a location where the game environment had been recreated, with actors playing the part of the zombies and everything. The guy who'd set it up was English. Darren... Darren something. Mark couldn't remember the guy's whole name.

If it was a prank then he'd probably been filmed from the start. And the pranksters were probably behind these walls, making everything look and sound like it worked. Well, that was a relief - at least Old Billy-Billy wasn't real! Probably...

But the two cameras in the glass box had been down - they hadn't had any lights on. Had the pranksters obscured the lights to make it look like they were switched off when they weren't? Well, _that_ was some serious attention to detail!

Somewhere outside he heard that clanging sound again - like something heavy and made of metal falling on the floor. Maybe it was somebody working in the background.

"So uh, this is a prank, right?" he asked the room at large, reassured by the noise. There _had_ to be people behind the works, just out of sight. "It's really good!"

Nobody answered. He pulled a face - as a Let's Player he frequently had one-sided conversations with his web-cam to make his viewers feel included in his game play-throughs, but he'd have really appreciated an answer from his pranksters. They'd managed to make such an oppressive atmosphere. He was sure it was all safe, really, but a little reassurance wouldn't have gone amiss.

_But wait a minute. How did they get me out of my apartment?_

He did his best to put the uneasy feeling that somebody had got him out of his home against his will to one side - for now. He could find out how they'd done it later, and he'd definitely take steps to make sure it didn't happen again. For now, Mark felt he should put on a willing face for his fans - and he _had_ to test out this machine. Seriously, if they'd put in this much effort surely he could interact with the SCPs!

The gas mask was supposed to upgrade to give him infinite stamina. Well... there was no way they could really do that. He'd have to act, and he could hardly pretend to have more stamina than he'd already demonstrated. His headlong rush to the Clockworks had left him winded and that was the best he could do, running-wise. Mark may have been physically strong but he wasn't built to run. But he had other things to upgrade.

"I guess I'll upgrade my sat-nav!" he announced.

Still no answer.

Mark grinned to himself. "Okay then, here I go! I'm looking forward to seeing how you do this!" He turned the dial to Fine, took the sat-nav out of his pocket and put it on the floor of the intake booth. The machine clunked and banged as if it was working. It was pretty impressive - but then, they'd managed to make Billy's concrete-scraping noises too. He idly scratched the short hairs of his beard as he waited, and tried to figure out how they might be doing all of this. The booth opened so he fetched the sat-nav and examined it.

Sure enough it had changed: it looked slicker and the display colours were different. Mark laughed - and almost managed to make it sound like a happy, carefree laugh. "Well done guys! I didn't even hear you swapping it over!"

Nope, they still didn't say anything.

"Uhh... Guys? Are you going to talk to me at all, or am I on my own here?"

The environment stayed silent.

He sighed. It was all good fun, he supposed, but that one question nagged at him. _Seriously. How did they get me out of my apartment?_ Was it hypnosis, like the zombie shooter? They'd had to have had access to his home and he didn't like that.

Maybe one of his friends had helped out with that. _Now, who could that've been?_ he wondered, the pit of his belly warming as he thought of a certain friend of his who might have been up for this. Mark took his phone out and dialled Bob.

Bob's line went straight to voicemail.

"Hey Bob," he said, "I'm in the game - it's really awesome! Call me back, okay?"

He hung up and thought about moving on with the game, but before he did he wanted to speak to somebody, anybody, just to get some idea of how the prank had been pulled. If nothing else, he wanted an explanation of how they had physically got him out of his normal clothes. If he was honest with himself, _that_ bit was pretty creepy. Could he really be hypnotised deeply enough for somebody to get him out of a pair of jeans and into a set of overalls? He didn't know enough about it.

He tried Wade. It wasn't as if Wade was a natural prankster but if anyone was close enough to him to know about a project this big it was Wade. After all, Wade kept a spare copy of Mark's front-door key.

"Oh, hi Mark!"

"Hi. So, you know about the game, right?"

There was a pause from the other end of the line. "No?" Wade said uncertainly. "What game?"

_Playing innocent, huh?_ He made it easy for Wade. "SCP Containment Breach."

"What about it?"

"I'm stuck in it."

"Oh. Well, I'm sure you can handle it," Wade offered. "You've already won it a few times before, haven't you?" Wade's innocent tone suggested he didn't know about the prank. Either that or he was acting his heart out for the sake of keeping up the pretence.

Mark remembered that his battery had been running low and checked it. He had a few minutes at most. He rolled his eyes at his dumb self who'd completely forgotten to recharge his phone earlier, as per usual. "Well, I was just calling to say it's great! Very real," he said, glancing again at the Clockworks behind him.

"They've brought it out on the oculus rift?"

"Nope. No Wade, they haven't." Mark grinned at his surroundings once more. Well, whether Wade knew about the prank or not, Mark wanted to move on. He guessed it was the right thing to do - he might as well get the best mileage he could out of all this. "Okay, I'm going to go play some more. See you later!"

"Okay. Have fun."

Mark hung up. He put the key card through the machine to upgrade it until he got an Omnicard, and triumphantly picked it up. Now there was nowhere on-site he couldn't go! But then he stopped as he looked at it. _This isn't like the game._ The card had improved all right, but it had improvements that he hadn't seen before in Containment Breach: it now came complete with a lanyard. He shrugged, put it around his neck, and left.

xXx

Mark decided to take a tour of the environment to give the viewers a good look at how some of the other SCPs worked. Billy ambushed him early on ("Dammit Billy! You go to hell and you _die!_ ") but his one-eye blink trick made the SCP a non-issue. He tried blinking properly once he was a good distance away from the statue and somehow - some-fucking-how! - it moved toward him by a couple of metres.

"I tell you what guys, there are some genius stage-hands working behind the scenes, here!"

He entered another corridor and saw the familiar signs of the restrooms on the wall. Then he noticed a sound. A voice, distressed. The owner of the voice gulped and Mark decided it belonged to a crying man. Mark instinctively felt pity for the guy before rallying: he was about to meet his first human actor in the game - somebody he could actually talk to and get some sense out of all this. This would be interesting! He approached the communal doorway and the actor heard his footsteps.

There was the sound of a gunshot, and then silence.

_Oh sure, it's the guard who shoots himself._ Mark felt uneasy about the taste in adding a detail like that, but it seemed rude not to check it out now that it was done. He went into the mens' toilets and found the guard face-down in a spreading pool of blood.

Seeing that made him pause. "O...kay," he said slowly, folding his arms as he stood over the scene. He looked at the corners of the ceiling for cameras, but there weren't any. Maybe they were better-hidden, disguised as screw heads perhaps. "This is some really close attention to detail," he added, trying to figure out the best way to react. In truth he knew that some of his viewers would feel personally affected by this scene and he didn't want to show any disrespect. Heck, _he_ found it affecting and wanted to say so.

_What do I do? Say something about people valuing life and looking after each other, or would that be over-sincere?_ God damn it, he'd been in such a buoyant mood a moment ago! Why did they have to make this a thing?

He couldn't gloss over this. "Um... Yeah. Look, you guys know what I think about stuff like this, and... What I will say is, look out for each other. I think this character assumed the worst, but... you know, it was just me out there, I wasn't some SCP. He could've hoped for the best and he would have been okay."

There didn't seem to be much more he could say.

He heard another clang beyond the restroom. Heavy metal hitting something hard. Certain it was something to do with the stage-hands he paid it no attention.

He looked around again at the room. "I'll say again that all of this is a perfect match for the game. The guys who put this together got everything just right." _Except for some of the ethics._ He looked once more at the actor laying in a heap on the floor. "Even the fake blood they've used here smells realistic."

There wasn't anything else to gain by being here. Mark prepared to leave but he wasn't sure whether it was really a good idea to check out the butt-ghost on the back of this sad scene. "Welp, those SCPs aren't going to find themselves. I'm going to go find- _whaaaat the heeellll..._ "

An unseen SCP made a sound that was a cross between a growl and a laugh. 

Mark recognised that sound. "Radical Larry?"

A movement caught his eye. A patch of the floor was darkening before his eyes, turning black and peeling away, hairline cracks appearing on the surrounding tiles. Mark cautiously went just a little closer, eager to know how they were doing this. Maybe it was some kind of chemical reaction - it stank!

A black skull rose up out of the centre of the dark patch, followed by a skinny pair of shoulders.

Every physiological system in Mark's body readied him to bolt, but he pushed the instinct away just for now. It made his heart rate go through the roof to stay but he _had_ to see this! "Holy _balls!_ You gotta be _kidding_ me!"

'Larry' reached his full height and took a step towards Mark, who gasped and stumbled back. The actor's prosthetics were incredible! The SCP's eye sockets looked mostly hollow but rotten eyes glinted in it, either wet or shiny from being dried and hardened. Its teeth were very rotten and its mouth was set in a skull's perma-grin. Its hair was lank and thin and looked rough to the touch.

"Oh my God! You're _terrifying!_ "

The actor, to his credit, didn't show any reaction to the comment but walked implacably closer.

Mark suffered an irrational moment of doubt that the guy wasn't going to hurt him and backed away with a nervous, barking laugh. Then he stopped himself and held his hands up for the benefit of his viewers in a sign of surrender. "Okay guys, I'm going to admit I held off from using the clockwork machine to improve my gas mask because I figured they'd need me to fake being a better runner. But seriously, these guys are outdoing themselves! I wanna go check out Larry's pocket dimension. I want to see how they're going to do that." He couldn't see how they could - the pocket dimension was supposed to just spontaneously _appear_ around the player, and that sounded too hard to do - but they'd made good on everything so far.

Heck, maybe the idea was for him to run from Larry and accidentally get caught, and then for that to snap him out of his hypnosis. That was his best guess. So maybe he was supposed to run. Still angry and disturbed about being kidnapped from his apartment, Mark chose not to run, fully aware that he was being stubborn. He let Larry come within reach.

The actor swiped at him and grabbed the back of his neck in a hard grip.

_Ow!_

"Oh no!" Mark hammed up his reaction, gritting his teeth from the strength of the guy's grip. "I done gone and got caught! What are you going to do to me, Radical Larry?"

If Larry's superb acting skills hadn't been enough to unnerve Mark then the sensation on the back of his neck definitely was: he felt his skin begin to ache.

And then it started to burn.

"Argh! Uh- Larry, man. Ease up!" Mark was just reaching for his neck to pull the actor's hand away when the room around him went blurry...

He heard creaking all around him, like the sound of an old shed on a windy night. The sound started to echo weirdly and his sense of spatial awareness shifted, forcing him to stiffen his legs to avoid falling over. His surroundings didn't go black, not quite, but everything got darker and... and he could smell something stale and damp. He breathed in and the air seemed thick. His ears needed to pop.

...When everything cleared up again, he knew he was really in danger.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mark Fischbach (AKA YouTube's Markiplier) doesn't have the strongest faith in his intelligence. So when he is dropped into the middle of a Facility during a serious containment breach and told to escape using his wits, he believes he's in serious trouble.

Larry's antechamber materialised around Mark with slow creaking noises, and that confirmed for him that something was indeed terribly wrong. The air tasted weird and it was much too thick. It felt dry on his skin, his eyes, in his throat - a bad, severe kind of dry. And most of all, it felt...

Other. That was the only word he could put to it.

"Oh crap." _Oh fuck, where am I? Just get out._

Larry's hand - and the rest of his body - had disappeared without the man appearing to have left. Mark didn't understand how Larry had done that. The character from the video game could break the laws of physics but an actor shouldn't have been able to. Right now however, that didn't matter. Mark looked at the circle of thresholds around him. He picked one at random, lurched forward and hauled himself down the corridor, his legs working hard against the thickness of the air, his footsteps echoing.

The effort made him pull the air harder into his lungs. He registered surprise that he didn't feel like he was running out of oxygen. There seemed to be enough of it to breathe in this stale environment but something bad and unhealthy was happening to him, he could feel it. An awful, caustic, almost chemical drying of his body, inside and out. He gradually found himself slumping to one side and once it started, he couldn't stand upright any more. It didn't get too bad for him to walk but he definitely needed to use the wall for support, if not lean on one thigh. He limped onwards, not daring to think too much about it in case he succumbed to panic.

His surroundings opened up and he saw fragments of grey rock all around, suspended in green mist that completely obscured any horizon. He knew the way he had to go and he focused as best he could, not dawdling, not hurrying as he jumped down onto the blocks below and traversed the bridge. At one point Mark looked down and got a stab of vertigo: there was an abyss beneath him, just like in the pocket dimension of the game. He got to the well and stood on the edge, and looked down into it.

According to what he knew about the game the only way out for him was to jump down it. But jumping down a well... _Should I really?_

He looked behind him. Larry was somewhere around and if Mark took too long to decide, he was a dead man. His main worries were the base and the walls. If the walls closed in and he bounced against one he could suffer serious injury. What he really needed was some way to tell what was really down there.

He snatched up a handful of pebbles and flung them in a wide arc, and listened for when they hit. He heard several impacts, but the sound came back too muffled for him to make much sense of. Nevertheless, he thought he could avoid the walls if he jumped straight down the centre. And, if he was lucky, the ground wouldn't be too uneven, and he wouldn't snap his back, legs or neck on impact.

Mark desperately wanted to believe that none of this was happening. He leaned against the stone wall for support and touched at the back of his neck - and reeled at the pain. It made him gag, it made his nose run. The flesh was broken, skin flayed open and too soft to the touch. He shuddered as the sensation turned from pure pain to a sick, hot pulse.

And then he took the leap.

The fall was swift but he didn't feel the same lurch in his stomach as he would have expected. He watched for the approach of the floor so that he could cushion his fall - roll, perhaps - but the physics of the place shifted abruptly and dropped him back in the antechamber. He landed not-too-hard on the rocky flooring, gathered his limbs underneath him into a crouch, and looked around in surprise and no small amount of delight - even if that only lasted a fraction of a second. Was this how animals in headlights felt, stuck on dangerous roads they didn't understand? He stood up slowly, steadied himself to avoid keeling over, and started the journey again.

_Please don't kill me. Please..._

The corroded, green-smeared walls went by too slow. The abyss reappeared. He hopped down to the block below and pushed himself onward to the well, his shoes scuffing on the rough rock. He dropped down it again and noticed again how much less of a feeling of weightlessness he got from the drop than he'd normally expect back in the real world.

The dryness was getting much worse, Mark could feel it etch into his skin. Mark's tongue and the inside of his mouth were getting tender and he vaguely wanted to cough, but he avoided that in case it drew Larry to him. He found himself wanting to squeeze his eyes shut to protect them - they felt full of dust. But Mark feared that if he closed his eyes he might miss Larry.

He dropped back into the antechamber. "Come on Mark," he muttered, and the sound that reached his ears barely sounded like his voice at all. "You can do this. Once more..."

Panic pressed in on his mind but he knew he had to hold it back, keep calm. He walked on. The dark, damp corridor. The foggy green. The grey stones underfoot. The well...

Fresh air rolled across his face and it was one of the best feelings of his life. He breathed it in. There were only traces of it but it was so perfect, so thin, so light! But at the same time everything was blurry - not just his vision, the workings of his mind felt slow and gunky. But as the seconds ticked by it cleared...

_I'm back. I'm back! Thank you!_

Mark found himself sitting on his feet on the Foundation floor, supporting himself on his hands. He pulled himself up to stand - it felt so easy.

But his skin! Every movement made it flex, and every flex hurt. _Oh God,_ he thought as he dared to acknowledge what had happened, as the fear began to trickle into his mind. His eyes seemed to be full of dust and although he could still see just as well as before, rubbing them didn't get rid of the feeling. They felt hot and he couldn't blink them clear no matter how much he tried. Soon enough they started getting sore from his efforts so he gave up and replaced his glasses. He worked his mouth, aware that his tongue was sore, and swallowed - and winced at the pain.

That hurt too. He swallowed again, gingerly. That was a little better.

He touched the side of his neck close to where Larry had grabbed him. He didn't dare touch the injury directly again - it was actually raw, and not even a healthy raw. Larry had infected it. Or more likely, he'd made it rot at a faster-than-natural rate.

Mark realised then that he was thinking about all of this as if it was real. It couldn't be. It couldn't be. He just had to give himself space to work it all out. _I need to get somewhere safe,_ he thought and walked as fast as he could to the clockwork machine room, the safest place he could think of. Whatever this situation was, he couldn't call it a prank any more. The people involved had done this deliberately, so he...

 _So I what?_ he asked himself as he pressed the Omnicard to the lock device. _Tell them to stop? I need to get them to stop!_

He shut the door and began to pace.

The room around him was silent.

He paced some more.

"What the hell's going on?" he asked the room, his voice rough with anger and injury. "What even _was_ that? Don't do it again please, just... Don't do it again. I don't know how you did it but... It's done something to me..."

Mark's phone rang. He fished it out of his pocket, checked swiftly who was calling and half-sobbed, half-laughed at the name on the screen. He needed to hear from a friend right now and the sanest, most calming person he knew had called. "Wade?"

"Hi," Wade spoke. Mark heard the chattery rumble of the bar in the background, although the connection sounded weak and broken. A metal tray clattered and two women laughed loudly. "Where are you? You were supposed to be here nearly an hour ago."

"I'm still stuck in the game Wade," Mark answered and noticed how scared he sounded, how croaky the pocket dimension had left his voice. He took a breath and tried to calm down a little.

Wade had sounded mildly irritated at being stood up but Mark heard him change posture. "Wow, you sound really rough. And um, what was that?" he asked cautiously. "What game? What do you mean, 'stuck'?" The line seemed faint but Mark was relieved beyond measure to be having this conversation.

"I told you earlier," said Mark, eyeing the wall and hoping Larry wouldn't come walking through it. He walked around a little to see if he could get a better signal. "I'm stuck inside Containment Breach and I can't get out, and I- I just went to Radical Larry's dimension and now all my skin's burning and, and he ripped the back of my _neck,_ Wade, and it fucking hurts! I swear, I don't know how all of this happened but someone's trapped me in here and I don't know what they want. They won't talk to me and I've tried, seriously, I've tried."

Wade took a moment to answer, as if waiting to make sure Mark had finished. "You never told me anything like this." He sounded... well, slightly bland and expressionless, the way he did when shocked.

Despite his fear and anger Mark paused, confused. "I called you about thirty minutes ago and told you about it. I _told_ you about it."

Now it was Wade's turn to pause. "No you didn't."

The two men sat silently on their respective ends of the line as they tried to work out what was happening.

It was Wade who broke the silence. "What did you say about your skin?"

Mark sniffed - and cringed at the pain it caused in his sinuses. He looked at his hand, at the red burns. It shook slightly and he wondered what else the people behind the scenes might do to him. "I went into Larry's pocket dimension and now I think I've got chemical burns. I think they put something in the air. Hidden diffusers, maybe?" As he told the story he found that he badly wanted a hug. "It was like I was breathing syrup and now my throat hurts and the inside of my mouth's tender and I think it's done something to my lungs because breathing feels weird and it damaged my eyes." Mark gave himself a moment to catch his breath. All of this... it definitely didn't feel like a prank any more. Or maybe it was and it'd gone wrong. "Wade, do you know anything about all this? Is it a prank, because I need to get out of here." And then he thought of something and his blood ran cold. "Oh God. Billy. What if he can kill me? Wade, I have to get out of here, help me!"

"Mark, just calm down," Wade answered, "Whatever's happening, we'll figure it out." He held his breath for a second. "There's been a story going around," he said slowly, as if tentatively feeling his way forward in the conversation. "I don't normally read fanfics but there's been... of interest about..."

The reception at this end of the room was especially bad. Mark strode fast to the other end in case he lost Wade completely and relaxed a little as the reception improved.

"...different so I checked it out. I was just reading the start of it while I was waiting for you, actually. Mark... it's about you being stuck in SCP Containment Breach."

"What?" Mark felt sick to his stomach. "So do I go into the pocket dimension in it?"

"Yes. And you figure out how to escape Billy by blinking one eye at a time. Have you done that?"

"Yeah." Mark looked around the room, limbs heavy with fear as he tried to think about what this meant and how it might help him understand how to help himself. "Does this conversation happen?"

"Let me check," answered Wade. Mark waited as his friend took his phone away from his ear to look. A minute later he returned. "Yes." He sounded as freaked out as Mark had ever heard. "...conversation in the story... same words as we've used... now. It's really strange."

Even after piecing together Wade's broken speech Mark had little idea of what to make of that. Mark plugged his other ear with a finger and moved quickly to try and find a better spot, mind racing to figure out any kind of pattern for where the signal might be strong enough. "Does it say that you say _that?_ " he tried.

"Yes, it... exactly the kind of stuff it'd make sense... to say. I want to try deviating from that. Tell me something about Tiny Box Tim," he demanded suddenly.

"Uhm-" croaked Mark, keen to do anything that might help his situation or even just give him a clue. "I have a plushie of Tiny Box Tim on my desk."

"Right," answered Wade. "...didn't say that in the story."

"Does it say what I _did_ say?" Mark asked out of curiosity, and waited for Wade to check. He touched the pads of his fingers against each other - they were still over-sensitive and uncomfortably hot - and thought about what the accuracy of the story meant. _Maybe the pranksters are recording what I do and writing about it? But how's that a prank?_ He massaged a spot beside his neck injury and grunted as it rang with pain. _Is it blackmail?_

Wade came back on the phone. "It's changed! I refreshed the page... says we talked about Tiny Box Tim."

"What does _that_ mean?" asked Mark, exasperated. "Somebody's adding to the story as we talk?"

"It's stranger than that... conversation's already written. And lots of chapters after."

"What?!" Mark stopped in his tracks. "Is it finished?"

"Umm-" said Wade.

"How does it end?" Mark added quickly before Wade stopped listening to check.

The sounds of Wade's breathing disappeared again, and Mark tried leaning against the wall for a better signal. It hurt the skin of his shoulder and hip but it was worth it to be able to hear Wade properly, and the cold of the concrete cooled the burn.

"It's not complete but there's a few chapters. You still seem to be in an okay condition where it finishes. And it's written in British English," Wade mused as an after-thought.

The quality of the line seemed good so long as Mark stayed where he was and he relaxed a little. "What am I doing?"

"You're in the head office thinking about how to deal with the Mobile Task Force."

"Oh. So the story might change depending on what I do?" It was possible that Radical Larry could walk through the wall where Mark stood. He realised this one second and stepped away from the wall, the next.

"It sounds like it. So Mark, just do what you-"

The call went silent.

"Wade? Wade, hello? I can't hear you. Wade?"

The line died completely, leaving Mark with no better company than a silent mobile phone.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mark Fischbach (AKA YouTube's Markiplier) doesn't have the strongest faith in his intelligence. So when he is dropped into the middle of a Facility during a serious containment breach and told to escape using his wits, he believes he's in serious trouble.

Mark checked his battery. There was still a little power in it, just barely. He started to call Wade again but then he stopped.

It had been helpful and reassuring talking to Wade. He might need his help again later. Perhaps it made sense to leave that little bit of power on his phone until he really needed it.

He sighed and sat down, and thought. _Okay, so somebody's following everything I do and reporting on it on-line. So that means somebody's listening. I can talk directly to the people recording all of this! Maybe I can talk them into letting me go._ Mark tried to ignore how flimsy the plan seemed. He just hoped his hunch was right.

"Hey! Hey guys," he called to the room at large, fairly gently to preserve his voice. "I don't know who you are but I can tell you've put a lot of time and effort into all this. Look, guys... A joke's a joke but this, what you've done to my skin-" he swallowed painfully, "-and my throat, it's not cool, okay?

"Look at it this way. I'm a Let's Player and I love horror games. But it doesn't matter what happens to me in a game: it's always safe because it's not actually happening to me. This-" he looked around him at the bleak surroundings of the Clockworks room. "-isn't safe. Please, just let me out and we can forget about it."

He wasn't genuinely sure he _could_ just forget about it - the pocket dimension had affected two of the main tools of his trade: his appearance and his voice. He hoped the damage was temporary but even if it wasn't, perhaps offering absolution to his captors would convince them to let him go.

Nobody answered him.

"So what is it you want?" he asked, forcing himself to stay patient but starting to feel more angry than scared. It was the confusion that ultimately got to Mark: being touched by a monster that technically shouldn't be able to exist hurt, but jumping down a well didn't? He needed answers.

None came.

"Look, I've already said. I'm not doing a play-through of this. It's too dangerous. So either let me go or tell me if there's something else you want."

Not a word.

Mark lost patience, stood up and approached the machine's chassis. He banged on it with his fists and it boomed with the satisfyingly loud noise of sheet metal. " _I don't like being here,_ " he shouted as loud as his throat would let him, which admittedly wasn't very loud. It felt like gargling sharp stones but he was too furious to stop until he'd said what he needed to say. " _Let me out!_ "

Nothing.

He gripped the hair on the back of his head out of sheer frustration but then stopped when it caused his neck injury fresh pain. _Come on Mark, think._ Who would be prepared to hurt him? Who'd want to put him in an elaborate death-trap?

"Are you haters?" No, the situation didn't seem to fit. Why would they bother to make a tribute like this imitation Facility if they hated him? If they wanted to hurt him then they had succeeded, but there were far more economical ways to do that.

 _What else?_ Well, there was one other obvious motive. "Is it money? Is that it?" It sickened him to think he was considering this but he did a swift calculation of how much he'd be able and willing to pay for his own ransom. "If it's money you want, we can talk. Come on guys."

Nothing. It had almost certainly cost them a lot of money to set all of this up in the first place. So maybe money wasn't it.

"Or," Mark got a flash of inspiration and tried flirting. "Girl? Are you female? I'm sorry. I didn't mean to call you a guy. Did I get it wrong?"

So flirting didn't work either.

He dropped the pretense, and started pacing again. "Look... I can't think of anything else to offer you. What do you _want? Please,_ I'm losing my mind here!"

Nobody spoke. Mark wasn't sure what he was expecting - maybe a voice over the public-address system, or for somebody to walk in?

He tried to calm down again and reviewed his thoughts. The most likely scenario as far as he could tell, was that they wanted him to do a play-through within a simulated environment. Only he wasn't happy to do that. Well, there was only one thing to do when faced with unacceptable working conditions: he went on strike.

"Okay," he said, taking care to keep his voice gentle despite his anger. "I've tried talking to you but apparently you don't want to. Screw the game, I'm sitting here and I'm not moving until you get me out." And Markiplier sat, folded his arms, and settled down for as long as it took.

Silence reigned for a moment. Mark looked resolutely ahead at the wall, waiting for some kind of change in his circumstances.

And then his vision swam. He blinked a few times and established that it wasn't his eyes, sore as they were, causing the problem. It was a series of movements on the wall itself. As he watched, particles of dirt migrated along its surface and made the shapes of words.

Mark stood up in a flash and backed away a step, ready to bolt. Bolting meant that he would have to go closer to the writing to get to the only available exit, and wait for the door to open. He was just trying to figure out how much of a problem this presented when he saw the dirt converge into words.

YOU ARE IN A STORY.

"Finally!" Mark announced, relief tumbling over his anger. "Thank you for answering. Right, sure. Wade found the story you're writing. And you're British, right? So, what do you want from me?"

THIS IS NOT HATEFIC.

"Right. Well, that's good news. I think."

I AM NOT AIMING TO EXTORT MONEY FROM YOU.

"Uh-huh. Good, thank you?" he said, his inflection raised to imply his question of what they _did_ want.

MY GENDER IS NOT YOUR CONCERN. THE SAME IS TRUE OF MY NATIONALITY.

Mark put up his hands in response to the admonishment. "Okay, fine. It's none of my business."

THIS IS RATIONAL FIC.

Mark gave the wall a confused look. "It's what, now?"

A PUZZLE STORY.  
YOUR TASK IS TO ESCAPE THE FACILITY ALIVE.

If Mark had been smiling at all - and perhaps he had from sheer relief or to come across as harmless and friendly to his mystery captor - this statement wiped the grin clean off his face.

Mark froze as he saw the word 'alive'. _As opposed to what?_ Before he could think how to respond the words cleared away and more appeared in their place. He watched the dirt migrate across the wall and form into straight little lines, the holes of Bs and As gradually becoming defined. His eyes tried to make sense of the words before they were quite legible and the effort left him a bit queasy.

THE SETTING YOU ARE IN BEHAVES LIKE A REAL ENVIRONMENT.  
YOUR OPTIONS ARE MORE VARIED THAN IN THE SCP CONTAINMENT BREACH GAME.

"Right?" prompted Mark.

SO ARE THE PROPERTIES OF THE SCPs, OBJECTS AND PEOPLE WITH WHOM YOU WILL MAKE CONTACT.

"I'm... not sure what you mean."

EXAMPLE:  
IN THE GAME YOU MAY CARRY TEN OBJECTS, NO MATTER HOW BIG OR SMALL.  
IN THIS ENVIRONMENT YOU MAY CARRY AS MANY AS YOU CAN MANAGE...  
BY FILLING YOUR POCKETS...  


Mark had to look at the floor tiles for a few seconds - the movement of the dirt was starting to give him motion sickness. By the time he looked back the next sentence was ready.

BY ATTACHING THEM ABOUT YOUR PERSON, SUCH AS THE GAS MASK AROUND YOUR NECK...  
BY CARRYING ITEMS IN YOUR HANDS.  


Mark started to stitch all of this together in his mind. He looked at the floor again to let his sense of motion normalise and to think about what all of this meant. The tiles were a strangely sterile dull white, grouted in with dark cement that made them look a bit dirtier than they really were. That pretty much summed up the environment: clinical and grim.

THE NUMBER OF OBJECTS YOU MAY CARRY HAS NO LIMIT...  
YOUR INVENTORY LIMIT HERE IS THE LIMIT OF YOUR PERSONAL ABILITY TO CARRY.

"Right! I get it. So..." he stopped to think. "So if I carry an armful of stuff there's a risk I could drop something. In the game, the D-class never drops anything no matter how many times he opens doors or gets jump-scared. But I might?"

CORRECT.

Mark had had a rush of relief at the start of this conversation but now he felt his fear and anger return. There was one thing he needed to know. Well, there were lots of things actually, but the first that came to mind was the most important. "Can I die here?" he asked, trying not to look too afraid of what the answer might be. 

YES.

"Oh crap," he muttered and steadied himself. "Is the death permanent, or will I re-spawn like in the game?"

YOUR DEATH HERE WOULD BE PERMANENT.

Mark shook his head with numb disbelief. "No. That's not- don't do that." He started pacing, trying to work off the stress he felt building up inside, to make it somehow not be true. He looked at these last words as if they might have been changed to say, 'Only Joking! LOLZ!!!', however tasteless that would be. He willed them to say something else, something less deadly, but they wouldn't.

His temper snapped and he ranted at the wall. "So that's it? You put me in a frickin' death trap and tell me to get on with it? No! Seriously, just no!" he grated, heedless again of the razor-blade pain in his throat. "You can't _do_ that! I don't know who you are but you're holding me hostage here. I didn't agree to this. Come on, I already said I'm not doing this damn play-through. Let me out!"

NO.

"Come on, man! You don't _need_ to watch me to come up with a story. If you want a story just... _write one!_ Seriously. Let. Me. Go!"

YOU MISUNDERSTAND THE SITUATION.  
YOU ARE NOT PROVIDING THE SOURCE MATERIAL FOR A STORY TO BE WRITTEN.  
YOU ARE LITERALLY WITHIN A STORY.

Mark couldn't believe he was playing along with this garbage but he did it anyway, anything to stop the madness sooner. "So write me so that I get out alive!"

YOU HAVE AUTONOMY WITHIN THE STORY.  
I WILL PRESENT YOU WITH PUZZLES, PROBLEMS AND DILEMMAS.  
IF YOU SOLVE THEM ADEQUATELY, YOU WILL ESCAPE.

"And if I don't, I die," he said flatly.

YES.

"This is bull! This, is fucking _bullshit!_ "

YOU BELIEVE THAT I AM INSANE, OR THAT I AM LYING.

"Well- frankly, yes." He found himself grabbing handfuls of his hair, pacing, breathing hard - and all of it was uncomfortable or flat-out painful. But he felt like he was going crazy. It was hard work to stop it.

USE THE MACHINE TO IMPROVE THE GAS MASK.  
YOU AVOIDED REFINING IT BEFORE AS YOU DID NOT BELIEVE IT COULD IMPROVE YOUR ENDURANCE.  
IMPROVE IT NOW, MARKIPLIER, AND TEST IT.

Mark stared at the message for a moment as if he might out-glare it. "Fine," he said eventually. He pulled the mask as gingerly as he could over his head and put it in the input booth. He didn't believe this would work. It _couldn't_ work, it just didn't make sense. If he did it and proved that it didn't work then... maybe they'd let him go.

Maybe?

He didn't think that would really happen. Whoever this person was, they were clearly nuts, but anything was worth a try. _And hey,_ he thought with a touch of hysteria as he placed the mask on his face, carefully avoiding the wound on his neck, _it's a puzzle story, so it's worth a try, right?_

NOW JOG.

Mark took a steadying breath and broke into a jog around the edge of the clockwork machine room, expecting his lungs to protest. They... they didn't. It hurt his skin as he chafed his arms against his ribs and stretched the skin at the back of his legs, but his lungs remained painless. He gritted his teeth and tried speeding up to a sprint: his lungs felt as strange as before, but no worse than if he'd been sitting on his butt and breathing normally. He didn't even get lactic burn in his legs, as much as they stung from brushing against the fabric of his overalls. After a couple of minutes he came to a stop and pulled the mask off fast. He accidentally brushed his neck wound, winced with pain, and threw the gas mask to one side. It half-clattered, half-bounced and came to rest on the floor.

"How is that even possible?"

DO YOU BELIEVE ME NOW?

"It can't be possible," he said, and realised he had an idea about how they'd made it work. "You put some kind of chemical in the pocket dimension to burn my skin and lungs. Maybe there's something in the gas mask, I don't know, some kind of painkiller or stimulant?

"I don't like you using chemicals on me, okay? I already said, that's not cool. I'm not using it again."

YOUR LACK OF TRUST IN THE EVIDENCE MAY BE YOUR UNDOING.

"Hey, I'm doing my best here," he growled, paced a little and then stopped, his hands on his hips. "So do I at least get points for solving your puzzles, huh?" The sarcasm came by second-nature. 

EVADING SCP-173 BY SINGLE-BLINKING: 150 POINTS.

"Thanks," Mark replied sourly.

xXx

"Mark? Mark, hello?"

Wade had been struggling to hear his friend the whole time with the bar being pretty noisy and with Mark's end of the line breaking up. Now he'd lost him completely.

He tried calling again but couldn't make contact.

 _What on Earth is happening?_ he wondered. Mark's life could get a little crazy sometimes but this was off the charts. Wade didn't want to disbelieve Mark about being kidnapped but he had a lingering doubt that it was true - it just seemed too extreme. For a start, Mark wasn't the type to let himself be taken without shouting about it, and kidnappers didn't like their victims making noise, did they?

And he _really_ didn't know what to make of the story. It was very odd indeed and if Wade was honest with himself he felt uneasy about it, but so far he wanted to avoid jumping to any far-fetched conclusions. It was probably just an innocent story; he couldn't think of any sensible alternative explanations.

But then again... something weird was definitely going on.

He had no more reason to stay at the bar. He left and headed to Mark's place to see if anything looked out of place there.

Wade was Mark's spare-key holder so he was able to let himself in. He knocked first to be polite but got no answer. He called just to double-check: "Mark? Are you in there?" But he still got no answer. He went inside.

Everything looked normal: a few unwashed dishes by the sink, a pile of half-folded laundry on the edge of the couch - and Mark's front door key on the kitchen counter.

"Hello? Mark?"

Wade knocked on the doors of the bathrooms and bedrooms and tentatively checked them, but there really wasn't anyone home.

He took out his phone again and checked the story. It said Mark had lost his connection and gone looking for a better one. It said he'd managed to speak to Wade again but as Wade skimmed through, it turned out only to be somebody posing as him. It said Mark figured out he wasn't talking to the real Wade and then that his phone had shut down.

Wade tried to call but Mark's line went straight to voice-mail. Wade hung up, disappointed.

Finally he stood in the middle of the apartment, chewed his lip as he figured out what to do next, and left.

He got home and called the police.

"Los Angeles Police Department."

"Hi. I want to report that my friend's gone missing."

"Certainly sir. I need to take a few details..."


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mark Fischbach (AKA YouTube's Markiplier) doesn't have the strongest faith in his intelligence. So when he is dropped into the middle of a Facility during a serious containment breach and told to escape using his wits, he believes he's in serious trouble.

Mark remained in the gloomy half-darkness of the clockwork room, unsure of whether he should stay or leave. On the one hand he could stay put, but then the author could apparently send in Radical Larry at any time to ferret him out. On the other, if he left then he ran the gauntlet of all the SCPs - including Larry, but at least he'd have a chance to escape. As far as he was concerned it all hinged on how much he trusted what the author had told him, and he didn't want to trust them, not one little bit.

He looked at the wall. "I don't much care for the situation you've put me in. I just want you to know that."

The author didn't respond.

"So I guess if you're giving me puzzles I'd best get thinking." Well, first of all he figured that he needed as much information as possible, and Wade had already helped him out. His phone would run out of energy by itself if he took too long to use it again, and then he'd lose the opportunity to get Wade's guidance before he even got to use it. He needed to call him again soon.

That meant finding a spot with better reception. And it meant knowing what to ask: it'd have to be a quick-fire conversation.

Mark paced as he thought. _What do I need to know?_

_First of all, what_ is _going on? I can't be inside a story, that's impossible._ He'd figured that, like the zombie shooter, he'd been hypnotised. Wade had already said he didn't know anything about any prank to get Mark into the SCP Facility, so he wouldn't be able to confirm whether Mark had been hypnotised or not. Bob might know, but he hadn't called back yet.

_Second, why the hell did they pick me? I'm not the best thinker around._ The author was the better person to ask.

"So, why did you pick me for this? I mean, come on-" he tried being light with the author, joking along with them. "-I'm just an idiot! _I'm_ not going to think of the best answers to your puzzles." He belatedly realised he could be seen to be suggesting that somebody else should be put in his place and shut his mouth. The ethics of that didn't sit right with him.

I PICKED YOU BECAUSE YOU ARE ALREADY FAMILIAR WITH SCP CONTAINMENT BREACH...  
BECAUSE YOU THEREFORE HAVE A HEAD START WITH UNDERSTANDING THE CHALLENGES AROUND YOU...  
ALSO BECAUSE YOU, MARKIPLIER, CALL YOURSELF AN IDIOT BUT THINK ADEQUATELY WELL.

"'Adequate', huh? Thanks," he said sarcastically. "But you haven't answered my question. I'm not the only person who's ever played the game."

YOU DISCOUNT YOUR ABILITY TO THINK.  
THEREFORE YOUR EFFORTS TO ESCAPE THE FACILITY UNSCATHED WILL GENERATE AN INTERESTING STORY.

Mark was struck dumb for a moment as the sheer assholery of this sunk in. "So you deliberately picked me because you knew I'd have a hard time. Yeah, like I said. _Thanks._ "

The author had nothing to say to that.

He couldn't think of anything he specifically needed to ask Wade, but _There's a crazy person holding me captive. For the love of God, help!_ seemed a good request to make. He patted himself down for anything else he might need to put through the Clockworks, decided there was nothing, and left the room with his cell phone in hand.

He passed back through a corridor lit with red lights and discovered Billy there. Mark's legs locked up before he remembered to single-blink and managed to relax enough to walk by. However, he couldn't help but stop first and look at the living sculpture. "I can't believe you're real," he admitted and took a closer look at its face. It was one of the weirdest things he'd ever seen, almost like a blown-up photograph of some parasite. Then it gave him the shivers and he had to move on.

He shut the door on Billy, which meant that the SCP was free to move. Mark was just checking his cell phone reception when Billy moved to the opposite side and opened the door.

"Oh, come on!" he grumbled and walked backwards to get to the next doorway. He shut that on Billy and turned to see where he'd got to.

The Facility's offices. Mark got two bars of reception, decided that was good enough and called Wade, leaning against one of the office cubes. Like most of the Facility the decor was dull and unimaginative: an almost grimy grey-white highlighted only with black details - the spinning chairs, the desk partitions, and some basic office supplies. It felt oppressive with the lights turned down, and Mark guessed it was oppressive to work in the rest of the time, mundane but with so much uncanny danger nearby.

"Hi Mark. How are you doing?"

Mark noticed how casual Wade sounded. He put his misgiving about that to one side. "Wade, listen because I don't have much battery left. Call for help. The cops, I don't know, just someone. Go get help. Can you do that for me?"

"Man, you sound really hoarse. Help? With what?"

Mark was speechless for a moment. Then: "I need help to get me out of this game."

"Do you want the cops to look up a play-through for you?" Wade's dry tone suggested he thought Mark was joking. 

"Wade... I mean about my being kept hostage."

"Hostage?" Wade sounded concerned. "By who?"

Mark felt a churning of dread in his stomach. "Do you remember any of the conversation we just had? About the story you found about me online?"

"No? That's news to me."

Mark explained the rest in a rush. "The person - or one of the people, I don't know - said they're not letting me go and that I've got to find my way out by myself. Come on, we already talked about-"

And then it clicked.

"You're not really Wade, are you?"

"Uh... What makes you say that?"

Mark weighed up Wade's vaguely miffed tone and wanted badly to believe that this really was his friend. "I need to be sure," he explained. He heard Billy's scraping and looked uneasily at the door. It chose to travel away and he returned his attention uneasily to his talk with Wade. "You sound exactly like Wade." Thoroughly recreating a video game environment was one thing, but why - when Mark called Wade on his own cellphone pre-populated with his friend's number - did he get someone who sounded right but didn't talk right?

"Of course I'm really Wade," came an answer with just a tiny bit too much enthusiasm to be characteristic of his friend.

Mark's instincts nagged agonisingly: it wasn't Wade. It _wasn't._ He pinched the bridge of his nose and thought about how to check whether or not this was Wade. What would an impostor say - or not say?

"Remember that conversation we had two days ago? You mentioned a breed of dog you were thinking about getting for a pet. What was it?" The conversation had happened in enough privacy that nobody else could have overheard. Mark felt sure that only the real Wade would know the answer.

"Mark, I don't know what's going on, but you're stressed out. Relax. We'll work it out-"

"What was the dog?" Mark insisted, putting a hardness into his voice that he so very rarely used against his friend. It hurt to do it - hurt his throat and his heart - but what else could he do?

"Uh, well Mark, I don't remember, I've had a lot on my mind," came the reply. The use of Mark's name fit well enough - Wade didn't like confrontation at all, but if he had to, he sometimes tried to disarm his opponent by using their name.

Mark clenched his fist, torn with conflict. He never liked to be insensitive to Wade given everything the guy had been through over the years, but he was as sure as he could be that Wade wasn't having a hard time at the moment. He had Molly, he had a good income doing something he loved... He knew an unhappy Wade when he saw or heard one, and Wade had been happy lately. He was sure of it. Almost. "Try to remember. For me, Wade. I need you to prove it's you."

"But you know it's me!" Again, just a fraction too much energy. This Wade sounded defensive. The real Wade wouldn't have done that, or so Mark judged. He would have gone quiet instead to figure out where Mark was coming from and then he'd give a well-moderated answer.

Mark gave the man on the end of the line a few more seconds to remember, but no answer came. At last Mark decided. "Who are you?" he asked darkly.

The man said nothing else. Instead the author wrote a message on the wall ahead of Mark.

IDENTIFYING FICTIONAL REPRESENTATION OF WADE: 75 POINTS

"So you're an actor?" Mark asked the man.

His cellphone chose that moment to run out of power and switch itself off.

Mark half-shouted a few choice swear words and threw his phone on the floor. It clattered and bounced off the foot of a desk and came to rest, but not before the battery skittered off in the other direction. "This is bullshit! I swear, if I ever find out who you are- You know what? Fuck it, I'm going back on strike."

Mark scooped up the parts of his phone, pulled out a chair and sat down to fit it back together while he waited for the author to come to his or her senses. He swallowed to nurse the pain in his throat from his rant.

He heard a gurgling laugh and startled as he recognised who it was: Larry. He could smell him too, the same sweet, rich but sickening smell of rotten flesh and ceramic. He looked around. Mark wondered where Larry was at the same time as he noticed that his chair was listing a little. He looked down.

_"Fuck!"_

He scurried out of the way and backed hastily away from the corpse. "He's not supposed to spawn there!"

Writing appeared to Larry's left, on the wall.

THINK: WHY WOULD A REAL SCP-106 NOT BE ABLE TO SPAWN WHEREVER HE CHOOSES?

" _I_ don't know!" Mark answered the wall beside Larry. "You're telling me he can?!"

YOU HAVE JUST DISCOVERED THIS FOR YOURSELF.

"You made him spawn right under me!" Mark ranted even as he backed up some more. "I mean seriously, what the hell? Do you _want_ me to die in this hell hole?"

Whether he was real or not Larry was getting far too close so Mark ran. His lungs struggled to work so hard and running made him cough uncontrollably but he ran anyway.

He dared to stop a few rooms later and leaned against the railings as he coughed some more and let his respiratory system calm down. Tear gas poured out of nozzles at the edge of the room but the black cloud wouldn't reach him. But that didn't stop it making his surroundings just that little bit more depressing, though. "What if he comes up at a bad time?" he rasped. "I can't afford to get stuck between him and anyone else."

THEN FIND A SOLUTION.

Mark gave the wall a baleful look. "In the game that would mean recapturing him."

CORRECT.

"Is there any reason I can't do that here - in this game?" He had another fit of coughing. The author's reply was still there by the time he was able to blink the hot tears out of his eyes and look.

GO AND CHECK FOR YOURSELF.

"Thanks for your help," Mark sneered and made for the door. His skin pulled and stretched painfully as he set off and his chest rang with pain from his coughing fit. "I can't deal with these injuries," he commented as he went, half to himself.

SO FIND A S-

"Yeah yeah, I know, find a solution. I _know._ "

He moved as swiftly as he could but didn't break into a run: the idea of Larry popping up under his feet again haunted him, but at the same time his lungs practically felt torn.

Mark found himself in a barren grey corridor with grubby windows along one wall, and recognised where he was with a stab of horror. He could hear the hum of the console in the adjoining room and the subtle rasp of something breathing. The air was stale and old; perhaps it was the grime on the walls he could smell. ( _Man, the author's got a lot to write with,_ he thought with distaste, but for now they said nothing). Mark knew two things: he knew which SCP was nearby, and he knew that he was going to have to be very, very careful if he was to survive the following minutes.

xXx

Wade finished giving the cops the details they needed and hung up, but then felt an uncomfortable sense that all he could do was sit on his hands until they got back to him. But then he realised there was another way he could help Mark, and as soon as he thought of it he perked up. He switched on his webcam and made a vlog.

"Hi guys, this is LordMinion777 here. I have an unusual message for you.

"Markiplier's gone missing. Now, I've tried calling his cellphone but I get nothing, I've checked his apartment and he's not there, and I've called the police so all the usual stuff's been done but obviously, he's my friend and I'm worried about him so if anybody knows anything about this, write in the comments below, talk to the LAPD, message me - whatever you like.

"Thanks, and this is LordMinion777 signing out."

He checked the recording on his computer, added it to his YouTube account under the searchable and alliterative 'Markiplier Missing', and left his house to run some errands. He'd be back in a couple of hours and could look at the responses then.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mark Fischbach (AKA YouTube's Markiplier) doesn't have the strongest faith in his intelligence. So when he is dropped into the middle of a Facility during a serious containment breach and told to escape using his wits, he believes he's in serious trouble.

Everything was still and quiet in that grim corridor, except for the breathing. At least, that was the truth when Mark first stepped in. Knowing what was supposed to happen in this room - according to the cut-scene in the video game - he approached as silently as he could. There was a person in there, a guard. If he sneaked forward soon enough maybe he could coax him away, save him from his fate. Earn a friend, even.

Or maybe he'd just get shot.

He heard a buzz, low and chesty, and his ears tuned abruptly in to it. Then a man spoke - the guard, though he was still out of sight: "How did he get out? Oh God. I saw his- Oh no, no! Get away from me!"

Mark's mind went in a few directions at once so he wasn't sure if he thought _He's about to die_ first, or _Run away!_ or _I really hope Larry or Billy don't turn up right now_ or _Oh crap, I don't want to be anywhere near the Shy Guy._

He'd always assumed the buzz was SCP-096's leitmotif, but in this awful moment Mark learned that it was actually the noise the creature made. Shy Guy buzzed louder as it became more disturbed, the buzz rising from low and tense to increasingly frantic, almost shrill as it became ever more unhinged. And then it finally cried out, a feral howl, and Mark ducked instinctively. Gunshots sounded. Then came the sound of wet ripping and a crunch that might have been bone and might have been the sound of so much flesh being torn all at once... And then it all went silent.

Morbidly curious about what had happened, Mark uncurled and crept forward to look at the aftermath and caught a glimpse of the Shy Guy's hunched back through the doorway. The monster, SCP-096. It had sat down facing away, so Mark, by pure chance, was safe. All he saw was the curve of the back of its bald head and nothing of its face. As soon as he registered how close he was to seeing its face he turned and scurried away, wondering what had possessed him even to look.

To check if the guard could really be saved, he guessed. Or maybe to get a sense of the monster just in case it chose to get up and move about. Which it most likely would, soon, if this creature was going to act like its video-game counterpart.

It didn't start buzzing, and Mark dared to breathe again.

The SCP had sat down in a pool of its victim's blood and Mark could smell the visceral, metallic stench of the liquid from where he crouched, his back to the safe side of the wall. _That's really all that's left of the guy?_ He hadn't had the time or will to look closely but there hadn't even been any rags from the guard's uniform. No chunks of meat. Mark shuddered at this ugly turn in his thoughts. He turned away, his heart thumping and his bile high, and left before Larry or Billy could arrive to herd him any closer to the Shy Guy.

xXx

A despondent walk through the gloomy white rooms of the Facility brought Mark to a familiar gangway, but when he recognised it his spirits lifted a little. He looked over the edge to make sure: Larry's containment box sat beneath him. "Yes!" he congratulated himself, the achievement of finding the right room improving his mood. Pleased to finally be able to _do_ something, the gamer walked on to the control room. But he stopped in his tracks as he remembered what he had to do next.

The femur guy. If he was going to capture Larry, some poor sap had to be made to make the loudest and last scream of his life and then be taken away to the pocket dimension to die as a meal or a plaything for SCP-106. Mark looked at the bank of controls against the wall: old-fashioned, chunky buttons and lights, two levers labelled Electromagnetic Manual Reboot and Audio Transmission, a screen showing the inside of Larry's cell and the Femur Breaker button, all set into a dark grey work surface.

As Mark had expected, the video feed showed a lone man inside, dressed in orange overalls, bound and trapped by his legs in the middle of Larry's prison. In the game the man had looked... well, like an unmoving sprite. In this environment though, he moved more naturally. His expression was bleak and haunted, his hands vaguely restless. He rolled his shoulders and neck as if to relieve muscle fatigue and closed his eyes tight as if that was his only way to escape the situation.

Mark didn't move for a moment - he felt too conflicted to do anything.

The truth was, Mark'd had a hard enough time breaking the femur guy's legs when he was only a video game character. Now that he was a real person - whether an actor or a fictional entity made real enough by the author didn't make any difference as far as Mark was concerned - Mark found the idea of sentencing the man to such a gruesome death even harder.

_No, not harder,_ he thought as he reached a decision. _Impossible._

The author had told him to get out of the Facility by solving puzzles. Well, how was gaining a companion not good puzzle-solving? Two heads would always be better than one, and if he wasn't prepared to break the guy's legs he could hardly leave him stuck in there. That would be a death sentence all of its own. Maybe he and the Femur Guy could find some way of keeping safe from Larry together, even with the old guy still running around.

He opened the audio feed.

The system must have clicked on Femur Guy's side because he snapped alert and spoke. "Hey... Is anyone out there? Hello? Please, let me go. Let me go. I just want to leave. Please!"

Mark bit back tears. _Yeah, me too bro._ He looked at the smaller controls and found a mic. "Hi. I'm coming in to get you." He retraced his steps and found a way into Larry's box.

Femur Guy looked at him wide-eyed - and then with relief. "Oh God, thank you."

"No problem," said Mark, trying not to sound too rough. "Look, I don't think there's much time. I'm going to get you out of here." He walked over, knelt and examined the mechanism holding the guy's legs in place - a combination of nuts, screws, metal bars and hydraulics - and set to work loosening the nuts by hand. Thankfully they weren't too tight. "My name's Mark."

Femur Guy laughed a little, bitterly. "Did they tell you yours didn't matter either when you got here?"

Mark looked up at the other man in confusion. Then he remembered the D-classes were given numbers to replace their names. "Oh, uh - yes." He decided on the spot to tell the guy his real background once they were out of this tight situation. He didn't want to spook him any more than was necessary. "What's your name?"

"Jay."

They smiled at each other before Mark returned his attention to unscrewing the leg mechanism.

"What happened to your skin? It looks like you got burned or something."

"Not burned," Mark answered absently, opened the hinge on the right leg and scooted over to work on the other. The friction hurt his shins; he winced and kept on working. "Larry - one of the monsters here. He caught me."

"So what the guards told me is true?" Asked Jay after a pause. "There's really monsters here?"

"You haven't seen any for yourself?" Mark answered.

"...No," Jay answered, and Mark heard a touch of scepticism in the other man's tone, which seemed reasonable given that monsters weren't supposed to exist. "What happened?"

Mark held his breath for a moment. How to tell Jay what lay between them and the exit without making it sound too improbable... He couldn't think of a way, not with the distraction of the mechanism and his various pains. He opted for honesty: "He rots people and things. There!" he said triumphantly, pulled the device open and stood up, hoping he could distract Jay with the promise of freedom. "You're free!"

Jay stepped out of the mechanism and looked guardedly at Mark as if he wasn't quite sure he trusted him. Mark suddenly became aware of Jay's greater height and air of suppressed aggression, and a heavy feeling in his gut made him question the wisdom of letting the guy go. "Why's your hair red?" the prisoner asked.

Mark ran his hand self-consciously over the red portion of his hair, awkwardly aware that it was somehow causing Jay to feel suspicious. "I'm... sort of an online celebrity," he explained haltingly. He'd never liked applying the word to himself, and he pulled a face to show how he felt about that. It was just that calling himself 'celebrity' was the quickest way to give Jay an impression of what and who he was. "I promised to do this on one of my charity videos if we got enough donations, and we did, so I went ahead and did it."

"You're on Death Row. What the fuck's wrong with you?"

In a flash Mark became aware of how bad all of this looked, and he stopped himself from retorting. _Of course! Dying my hair when he thinks I'm on Death Row makes it look like I don't care that I'm going to die. No wonder he doesn't trust me._ "I'm not on Death Row," he offered, in the hope that that would help calm Jay down.

RELEASING A CONVICTED, VIOLENT CRIMINAL: 0 POINTS.

Mark stopped himself from glaring at the wall just a second too slow.

"What was that about?" Jay sounded increasingly suspicious and inched his way around Mark to get closer to the exit.

YOU MUST LEAVE NOW. LARRY IS COMING.

"Look at the wall," said Mark and pointed to the author's message. If he was lucky, the message would vindicate him.

Jay gave Mark a warning look that got the gamer to take a self-protective step back, and then turned to look at the wall for himself. "I can't see anything."

The words were right there for Jay to see. Or they were for Mark, at any rate. "You can't see it?" he asked, starting to feel a suspicion of his own.

Jay headed for the doorway but stopped in the threshold for a moment to glare at Mark. "You stay the fuck away from me!"

Mark took a hasty step back and raised his hands in defence, and watched after Jay until he was out of sight. "You framed me," he grumbled. He looked at the wall. "Thanks. Really appreciated. So was that deliberate? Deprive me of a companion _and_ stop me catching Larry?"

The author didn't respond.

"I don't want to deal with Larry again," he added and then looked away in case they told him to find a solution. "I guess I'd better find some other way." He walked back and forth, looking at the floor. He tried to rub his temples, discovered it hurt, and stopped.

Larry - SCP-106 - was notoriously hard to contain. That was part of the reason he'd been written into SCP Containment Breach lore: to be simultaneously highly dangerous and very difficult to contain. The Foundation itself found it hard enough to keep him contained, so what did Mark on his own have that he could use to keep himself safe from the corpse?

He groaned. "I really wish you'd given me an easier problem to solve." He looked at the leg-breaking mechanism for inspiration. _Can I put the guard who committed suicide in there? Would that draw Larry?_

No - the point of breaking the D-class' femurs was to make him scream.

Could he chase Jay down and retrieve him? _No, of course not._ He was no more deserving of having his legs broken now than he'd ever been. _And anyway, how would I get him here?_

Could he somehow dupe Larry into coming in? Use himself as bait but not get his legs broken? He looked up at the speakers in the corners. If he screamed - Markiplier knew how to scream, it was pretty much in his job description - maybe he could draw Larry in.

Except that for the moment, with his throat in the condition it was, he couldn't scream. And anyway, that would leave him cornered before he'd be able to lock Larry in. How could he ever get to the controls in time?

_Ask Jay to control them?_ He didn't like the idea. _What if Jay trapped me inside?_

He looked again at the leg mechanism. And then he figured out his answer.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mark Fischbach (AKA YouTube's Markiplier) doesn't have the strongest faith in his intelligence. So when he is dropped into the middle of a Facility during a serious containment breach and told to escape using his wits, he believes he's in serious trouble.

Mark prepared to step into the grimy corridor and reminded himself precisely why he had chosen to come back here of all places; with every cell of his body screaming to leave again, it was hard to remember at first. It felt haunted, and the smell of the dead guard's blood had already begun to change from its exposure to the air. He shielded his eyes with his hands to stop himself from accidentally seeing SCP-096's face, and searched for the monster.

Mark found the edge of the pool of blood and very swiftly after, one of its pasty, cracked feet. He froze - except for his heart, which beat fast in his ears. He gave himself a moment to mentally prepare for what he had planned and as he did, started to sweat with fear. _This had better work. If it doesn't I'm screwed._

Shy Guy didn't show any signs of having noticed him. It buzzed sporadically, short bursts of alien sound.

"Can you understand what I'm saying to you?" Mark spoke slowly and clearly. "Because if you do, if you're sentient, you'd best tell me now."

The monster neither spoke nor reacted. The only sound to be heard in those few seconds was Mark's anxious breathing.

"Fine." 

Mark walked around to Shy Guy's back, took a final steadying breath and shut his eyes. Then he reached down, felt for the monster's shoulders and grabbed its forearms in the strongest grip he could manage. Its flesh was colder than he'd expected and without much tone; it made him think of refrigerated chicken breast and he cringed with disgust.

It flinched and buzzed but Mark held on, pleading that this wouldn't end badly. It reluctantly settled back down and stopped buzzing, although he could feel the muscles in its arms remain slightly tense.

"Okay," he muttered to himself under his breath, shunted his toe under Shy Guy's butt and pushed it to stand. 

It buzzed irritably again and tried to pull out of his grip. It wasn't a strong attempt but Mark got the impression it was only because Shy Guy didn't particularly care. But then again, as a child Mark had sometimes picked up earthworms and they hadn't reacted very much... at first. Once they'd understood they were being held they'd suddenly started to thrash back and forth like their lives had depended on it.

_Don't do the earthworm thing, Shy Guy. Don't do it._

Mark tightened his grip.

With the monster finally standing he dared to open his eyes a little. Shy Guy's flesh was even more skinny and malnourished than it looked in the game, all bones and hollows and saggy white skin. He kept his gaze down, focused on Shy Guy's lower back, and squinted to make sure he didn't see its face in the corner of his eye. He pushed at the monster's back with his chest to prompt it to walk and it did, although it buzzed in consternation.

Shy Guy buzzed a lot on the way to Larry's containment area but didn't get too loud at any point, neither did it make very much of an effort to pull out of Mark's grasp. That made Mark wonder if he wasn't doing something terrible after all. It might have been a monster - the game depicted it as being monstrous - but it _was_ just a living thing.

"You know, I'm kind of surprised," Mark commented as he marched the SCP along, forcing himself to keep up his pace. The gamer was starting to think that if he slowed down he'd stop. And then maybe he'd find himself thinking twice about what he was doing, and he didn't think he could afford that. He had to bite the bullet at some point. "I thought this bit was going to be harder than it is. You're actually being as good as gold. You're really cold, though."

Shy Guy just kept on walking ahead, its steps awkwardly short as it kept pace with Mark, its fingertips brushing the floor.

"You don't care, do you?"

They walked on in silence, except for a few short buzzing sounds.

When they got two rooms away from Larry's containment cell, Mark's ears tuned into the sound of footsteps approaching and he tentatively peeked around Shy Guy's waist. It was Jay, staring at the monster and Mark, frozen in the doorway like a deer in headlights. At the same time as Jay spotted Mark, Shy Guy lifted its arms to cover its face with its hands, in despair at its face having been seen - and effortlessly broke Mark's grip.

Mark understood in a moment of horrified clarity what was about to happen.

Shy Guy stumbled, unable to bear Jay's knowledge of its face, and its buzzing started to escalate. Mark backed away to give the monster space and shielded his vision.

"What the hell's that?" Jay demanded.

"I'm sorry Jay. I'm really sorry!"

"What's he doing? Is this to do with your Internet thing?"

Mark took a second too long to come up with an answer so Jay strode up to him and grabbed him by the front of his overalls. He pinned him against the wall. Pain exploded on the back of Mark's neck as his injury ground against the concrete wall. He looked at Jay in shock and agony before pulling his neck away from the wall and squeezing his eyes shut.

"What the fuck are you up to, you little-"

"It destroys you if you see its face." He raised his voice to be heard over Shy Guy's increasingly tortured wailing. "I'm sorry, just run!"

Jay kept him pinned but looked around at Shy Guy. Mark shrank back as best he could, trying in vain to peel the orange fabric out of Jay's grip.

"What do you mean, run?" demanded Jay over the noise as it reached a crescendo - and was ripped away from Mark with a howl from Shy Guy.

Mark stumbled forward. He kept his eyes clamped shut and scurried into the corner. Jay managed one last gasp before the sound of tearing flesh and flailing limbs took over. A spray of thick, warm blood landed across Mark and he cowered harder, unable to think or act or do anything but hide until the monster had finished its tantrum.

Shy Guy's screaming ceased and all movement slowed, and Mark understood that the atrocity was over. He sensed it lowering its scrawny frame to the floor.

In the silence Mark started to shake uncontrollably. _What now?_ He thought. _Get out of the corner._ He got to his hands and knees and crawled along the wall, away from the SCP. When he decided he was a safe enough distance away he settled on the floor and shielded his peripheral vision again so that he could... he wasn't sure what, but he had to do it.

Mark adjusted his glasses. He knew he was supposed to think about what to do next but his mind was quaking as much as his body. Before he knew it he realised that he'd been whispering, "What?!" over and over, but had no idea what he was really asking.

He'd chosen to sit in a similar position to Shy Guy so he had a view of the floor tiles in front of him. There were droplets of blood there - not his own, but sprayed there from Jay's death and puddling according to the rough texture and slight ripples of the floor tiles.

They began to move.

YOU ARE ALIVE.

The atrocity of the situation finally reached Mark and he started to cry. "Yeah," he gulped.

YOU SURVIVED THE ATTACK.

"Uh huh," said Mark, wiping at his cheeks.

YOU WERE WORKING ON A PLAN BEFORE. REMEMBER?

"Yeah," he answered, feeling like a child being led reluctantly through a conversation.

YOU SHOULD CONTINUE.

"Why?" he groaned. "You said you're writing all of this for a story. A story's not worth this."

The author did not respond, and the previous message disbanded into fragmented blood drops.

"A guy's dead because of you, do you know that?"

YES.

"What if he has a family? Kids? This isn't fair on them," he said, even as he thought of the fact that Jay, as a D-class, would have been killed at the end of the month anyway. Regardless of the flaw in his logic, the principle of it felt wrong. Totally wrong.

JAY WAS FICTIONAL, AND AS SUCH WAS A DISCRETE ENTITY.

Mark sniffed, winced, and decided to avoid doing that again because it hurt. He wiped his nose with the back of his wrist instead. "What do you mean?"

JAY HAS NO FAMILY UNLESS I WRITE HIM AS HAVING ONE.  
HE DOESN'T EVEN HAVE PARENTS.

"You're writing me and I came from a set of parents," he pointed out.

THAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN YOU AND JAY.  
YOU ARE REAL AND I PUT YOU INTO THIS STORY.  
HE WAS FICTIONAL.

"Did he feel any real pain?"

I DO NOT KNOW.

"But he didn't get to choose whether or not he died like that because you wrote it that way."

YES.

"That's sick."

AND THAT IS YOUR ASSESSMENT OF THE SITUATION.

Mark felt a stirring of anger in-amongst his grief and shock. "You're not even sorry you did it?"

HE IS FEELING NO PAIN NOW.

"That isn't what I asked! Don't you feel anything about it at all? No guilt?"

NO.

Mark shook his head. "I have no words." As horrific as he found the author's actions, being able to get angry made him feel just a little better. Or if not better, at least more prepared to manage the situation.

THAT MAY BE JUST AS WELL. LARRY IS COMING.

"Don't you mean you're sending Larry in to hurry me up?" he croaked.

The author said nothing, which Mark took to mean yes. He half-got up but then looked at the blood again. "By the way, are you an SCP?"

YES.

"What's your number?"

SCP-001.

Mark grunted his understanding and stood up. He shielded his vision again to get behind Shy Guy and nudged it to its feet. "Come on, man. Get up." As before, the monster showed little concern that it was being manhandled beyond a few low-level buzzes.

Mark steered it the rest of the way but didn't speak to it any more. Somewhere under the avalanche of emotions there might have been guilt or pity for Shy Guy, but for the moment it was snowed under, obscured by the sensations of damp eyes and half-numb hands. On the way, Mark got an idea for how to get out of the story but filed it away until after he'd dealt with Larry.

He got Shy Guy into Larry's cube, thanked himself for having the foresight to switch off the video feed and adjust the femur breaker, and strapped Shy Guy in.

He went down to the control room and pressed the button to work the hydraulic, and became instinctively still at the sound of the snap and scream. SCP-096 was reputed to be indestructible when it was chasing people - he remembered that from reading its supposedly-fictional Foundation notes online - but it seemed that when it wasn't, it was absolutely possible to hurt it.

He couldn't even find it in himself to feel relieved. Mark leaned his back against the console to give himself a moment to come to terms with what he'd done. It turned out he still felt like it deserved life, that it shouldn't have been killed. "Fucking hell," he muttered, and removed his glasses to clean them and wipe his eyes dry.

Its screams sounded human but had a wild edge that even sprite-Jay's had lacked. He heard the familiar sound of Larry's gurgle and pushed himself to stand again so that he could switch on the electromagnets and shut off the audio feed. He didn't want to hear any more.

And that was all the time Mark could spare to grieve for the long-limbed monster. So he left, his stomach sour and his arms and legs almost unbearably heavy.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mark Fischbach (AKA YouTube's Markiplier) doesn't have the strongest faith in his intelligence. So when he is dropped into the middle of a Facility during a serious containment breach and told to escape using his wits, he believes he's in serious trouble.

Mark tried to exorcise the horror he felt by walking fast, and he didn't stop until he got far away from Larry's lair. He stopped in a relatively bright corridor with the familiar off-white walls and just a few small rotten patches. Once he'd convinced himself SCP-173 wasn't around he looked at the wall and tested his earlier idea.

"I think I know how to get out of the game," he said.

GO AHEAD AND TRY.

"You created a situation that wouldn't have happened. The game - and my situation - both start with the Facility working just fine with all of the SCPs contained. Then they get released all at once and the staff run for safety. Even the guards try not to hang around. So who would have had the time to fetch Jay and put him in the leg breaker? It would be Nine-Tailed Fox who took responsibility for trapping Larry and they're not even here yet. You've written an impossibility!"

Mark folded his arms, ignored the way it made his skin hurt, and waited for... whatever happened when a paradox was uncovered. What he hoped for was for the reality around him to unravel, unable to cope with the inaccuracy he'd just pointed out, like he'd seen in low-budget sci-fi movies.

Nothing like that happened. It all stayed just the same as before. Instead, SCP-001 collected dark fibres from the rotten spots on the floor and walls, and wrote him a long answer:

YOU ARE RIGHT.  
HE SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN IN THE HYDRAULIC SO EARLY.   
ALSO, LOGICALLY YOU SHOULD NOT HAVE YOUR CELL PHONE WITH YOU.  
ALSO, YOUR D-CLASS UNIFORM SHOULD NOT HAVE POCKETS.

Mark blinked as he tried to catch up with this. "Why wouldn't I have pockets?"

WHAT WOULD A D-CLASS EVER NEED TO KEEP IN THEM?

He narrowed his eyes as he thought about that. "Nothing I can think of. So why did you give me pockets?"

TO HELP YOU ESCAPE.

"Uh... right. Thanks? But if you're making things up that wouldn't have happened in a real SCP Facility you're making a sub-standard story."

THE POCKETS CAN BE HELPFUL TO YOU.  
WOULD YOU RATHER I WROTE THEM OUT OF THE STORY...  
SO YOU LOSE THEM AS A RESOURCE?

"No no," he said, trying to modulate his voice so he didn't sound too grateful for SCP-001's concession, nor too pissed off. "I'll keep them if you think they'll help. I'm just surprised you included them if you don't think I should have them."

VERY WELL.  
I WILL GIVE YOU A JUSTIFICATION FOR THEM.  
THE UNIFORMS MUST BE QUICKLY AND CHEAPLY PRODUCED...  
TO MEET THE FOUNDATION'S DEMANDS.  
THEY CANNOT RE-USE OLD OVERALLS IN CASE OF CONTAMINATION...  
FROM THE PREVIOUS D-CLASS' SCP ENCOUNTERS.  
NEW SUITS MUST BE PRODUCED.

"Yup?" he asked, and looked away to avoid feeling sick while the SCP constructed its answer.

THE FACILITY USES A BANGLADESHI SWEAT SHOP TO PRODUCE THE OVERALLS...  
WHICH ARE MADE QUICKLY AND AT LOW COST.  
THEREFORE DESIGN HAS NOT BEEN A PARTICULAR CONSIDERATION.

"So what?"

WITHOUT EXPLICIT INSTRUCTIONS TO FOLLOW...  
THE SWEAT SHOP MANAGER INSTRUCTED HIS WORKERS TO REPRODUCE OVERALLS...  
FROM AN EXISTING DESIGN WHICH ALREADY INCLUDED POCKETS.

"Oh," was all Mark could think to say.

ABOUT JAY BEING IN THE CONTRAPTION:  
THE GUARDS ARE AFRAID AND SOME HAVE FAILED TO OBSERVE PROTOCOL.  
EXAMPLE: THE GUARD WHO SHOT HIMSELF IN THE TOILET.

"Yes," confirmed Mark, and instantly felt bad that the guy had died. He'd been _real,_ at least in some sense.

HE WAS NOT THE ONLY ONE WHO FAILED TO FOLLOW PROTOCOL.  
ANOTHER GUARD WITH A PARTICULAR FEAR OF RADICAL LARRY...  
TOOK THE TIME TO PREPARE A D-CLASS FOR R.L.'S RECAPTURE...  
BUT WAS INTERRUPTED BEFORE HE COULD FINISH.

Mark pinched the bridge of his nose and fought the urge to cuss the SCP out.

ALTERNATIVELY, AS THIS CONTAINMENT BREACH WAS...  
THE WORK OF THE CHAOS INSURGENCY...  
WHO WOULD NOT WISH FOR SCP-106 TO BE UNCONTAINED...  
FOR ANY LONGER THAN NECESSARY...  
THEY MAY HAVE ARRANGED FOR A GUARD TO BE READY TO PREPARE JAY.

"Two theories, huh?"

YES.  
I CONFESS I PREFER THE SECOND.  
THE FIRST INVOLVES TOO MUCH PREMEDITATION...  
AND TIME TO BE REALISTIC OF A PANICKING GUARD.

He gave up on that argument. "So why do I have my cell phone? What's the thinking?"

BECAUSE I AM WRITING RATIONALFIC...  
SO I GAVE YOU A RESOURCE PLUS AN EXTRA...  
SET OF CONSTRAINTS TO WORK AROUND.

"It wasn't rational to put my phone in the story," Mark insisted, aware he was baiting the SCP, which was probably an insanely bad idea but he was too angry not to. "I don't know, Zero-Zero-One, that just sounds like bad storytelling to me. I've done a little writing now and again, and frankly, your story stinks!"

INDEED, GIVING YOU YOUR CELL PHONE IS BAD STORYTELLING.  
I DO NOT HAVE AN EXPLANATION FOR THAT.  


Mark waited for more. There _had_ to be more, didn't there? It couldn't be that simple.

HOWEVER, IT MADE THE STORY MORE INTERESTING:  
YOU HAD TO WORK OUT WHAT HELP TO ASK WADE FOR UNDER A TIME CONSTRAINT.  
IT ALSO PRESENTED A PUZZLE:  
WHY DID WADE REMEMBER SOME PREVIOUS...  
CONVERSATIONS WITH YOU AND NOT OTHERS?  
YOU RESOLVED THIS.

"So I'm living up to your expectations. Great," he snarked roughly. "Can I leave now?"

IT GAVE YOU AN INCENTIVE TO LEAVE THE CLOCKWORK MACHINE ROOM...  
A CARROT TO BALANCE THE STICK.

Mark huffed. "Some carrot."

AND IT PROVIDED AN EXAMPLE OF BAD STORYTELLING...  
YOU HAVE ASKED ME ABOUT THIS...  
I HAVE ANSWERED YOU BY SHOWING YOU THAT I CAN...  
BREAK THE LAWS OF PHYSICS IF I WISH...  
I CAN DO WHAT I LIKE WITH THE REALITY YOU ARE IN.

That gave him the chills. He paced back and forth and grabbed his hair as he tried to figure out what the hell he was supposed to say to that. "That's insane! Come on, this is impossible! You can't just go ahead and change reality!"

SCP-001 said nothing, apparently content to let him process that on his own.

Eventually he gave up, outrage giving way to mental exhaustion. "What's the real Wade doing now?"

HE IS TRYING TO CONTACT YOU.

Maybe it was the emotion he felt with the knowledge that Wade was trying to help, or maybe it was just the right time for Mark's mind to click from horror back to anger, or maybe it was the suspicion that SCP-001 might be actively working to stop Wade from getting through for the sake of a story, but Mark felt himself flare up. "You're an asshole! _Fuck you!_ Oh, and by the way, that reminds me. I still don't really think I'm in a separate reality. That's just bull."

WHAT _DO_ YOU THINK, MARKIPLIER?

He swallowed to soothe his throat before he continued. Over time the swallowing was getting less and less effective. "I think I was hypnotised and sent to sleep so that I could be brought here." He said nothing else, just went silent to see what SCP-001 made of that.

IT IS AN INTERESTING HYPOTHESIS, AND ONE I DO NOT THINK I CAN DISPROVE TO YOU.  
SINCE WE ARE DOING BY-THE-WAYS, THE BRITON WHO...  
HYPNOTISED A MAN INTO A ZOMBIE GAME IS NAMED DERREN BROWN.  
I KNOW YOU WONDERED ABOUT THIS EARLIER.

Mark felt the colour drain out of his face and subconsciously took a step back. "You can read my mind?"

YES.

"Oh God, no. No, I really don't want that." He decided to test SCP-001's claim. The comment about Derren Brown proved nothing: Mark was a narrator by trade and often said the first thing that came to mind. He honestly couldn't remember whether he'd spoken his question about the zombie game or just thought it. He clamped his hand tightly over his mouth so he couldn't be lip-read and thought, _Why did the chicken cross the road?_

TO GET TO THE OTHER SIDE, MARKIPLIER.

Mark shook his head and started pacing. "That is weird. Seriously, that is weird. It's not advantageous to my privacy!"

I HAVE ONLY REPORTED YOUR RELEVANT THOUGHTS IN THE STORY.  
NO OTHERS HAVE BEEN INCLUDED.  
YOUR CONFIDENTIALITY IS ASSURED, MR. FISCHBACH.

Mark paced a little more as all of this sank in, and tried not to think about the thoughts he might casually have if his mind was truly as private as he'd always assumed it to be. Before he knew it he was thinking _exactly_ the kind of stuff he wanted kept private, and forced himself to think about something less incriminating. Just in case what SCP-001 had said was true.

He turned to the wall again. "Am _I_ an SCP in this story? Do I end up getting superpowers and growing a Warfstache of something? Because if that's the twist, we might as well skip to that right now."

IF THAT WAS MY PLOT TWIST YOU WOULD HAVE HAD...  
A MEASURE OF LEVERAGE IN DEMANDING IT TO COME...  
ABOUT SOONER RATHER THAN LATER.

Mark sagged. So that wasn't the solution either.

HOWEVER, IT IS NOT.  
YOU ARE NOT AN SCP, ALTHOUGH I BELIEVE...  
YOU COULD PLAUSIBLY BE CALLED A DASH-ONE...  
AS I AM AN SCP AND YOU ARE SUBJECT TO MY EFFECTS.

"Uh huh," he prompted sourly.

THE ONLY SUPERPOWER YOU HAVE IS YOUR OWN AUTONOMY.  
YOU HAVE BEEN USING THIS SUPERPOWER SINCE THE BEGINNING OF THE STORY.  
CONTINUE USING IT.

Mark gritted his teeth at being manipulated like this. "So what am I supposed to do now?"

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

"Are you this much of an ass in real life, in..." he paused before finishing the sentence. He couldn't believe he was buying into this layers-of-reality crap! "...wherever you come from?"

WHY NO, SINCE YOU ASK.  
IN MY OWN REALITY, BY CONTRAST, I AM INFORMED THAT I AM VERY PLEASANT COMPANY.

"You know what? I think you just said it all." Mark sighed and thought about his next priority.

Firstly, so much talking had left his throat all but raw and his skin had started to chafe against the fabric of his overalls after walking so far. The more he walked, the worse it was going to get. "I'd really like to be healthy again," he croaked. Well, the answer to that was obvious enough. "I'm going to look for the healing pills."

VERY WELL.

"Oh yeah - and what about my hair?" he asked, his voice little more than a coarse whisper by now. "If you want to help me out, why give me pockets but make it so I kept my red hair? It didn't exactly help when I freed Jay."

I PUT IT IN THE STORY AS A WILD CARD.  
ANY SENTIENT CHARACTER WILL LOOK AT YOUR OVERALLS...  
AND ASSUME YOU ARE A CONVICTED CRIMINAL, JUST LIKE ANY OTHER D-CLASS.  
WHEN THEY SEE YOUR HAIR THEY WILL KNOW YOU ARE DIFFERENT.  
THIS MAY WORK IN YOUR FAVOUR OR IT MAY BE TO YOUR DETRIMENT...  
DEPENDING ON THE OPINION OF THE CHARACTER YOU...  
INTERACT WITH AND HOW YOU CHOOSE TO INTERACT WITH THEM.

Mark nodded rather than spoke, all too aware that SCP-001 would see. He preserved the little that remained of his voice for one last conversation. "Should I switch off the warheads?"

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

"No!" he grated. "You can't put that much pressure on a guy! Thousands of lives might be affected. Tell me - should I switch them off or not?"

IT IS GENUINELY YOUR CALL.  
WHY DON'T YOU THINK IT OVER WHILE YOU LOOK FOR THE BOTTLE OF SCP-500s?  
I WILL BE INTERESTED TO KNOW YOUR THOUGHTS.

If Mark hadn't been a dedicated pacifist (and if he'd been physically in the presence of the person antagonising him) he was sure, right then, that he would have gone for the author. He worked his jaw and clenched his fists until the worst of his rage had drained away. "Why?"

SO FAR I HAVE PUT YOU UNDER THE PRESSURE OF 'THINK OR DIE'.  
THE DILEMMA OF 'THINK OR THOUSANDS OF INNOCENTS WILL DIE'...  
IS AN INTENSIFICATION OF THE VERY MECHANIC PROMPTING THIS STORY.

The rage surged once again. Mark very deliberately stood still for a moment and then, when he was sure he wasn't going to do anything rash, shook his head. He decided it was worth hurting his throat just a little more to express his final opinion. "I genuinely hate you, you know that?"

And he left the corridor.

xXx

Wade returned with a few bags of groceries and hefted them onto his kitchen counter, and then went straight to his computer to switch it on. He'd put the food away in a minute, he just wanted to see if anyone had left a message he should pass on to the cops. The LAPD hadn't tried calling him, he knew that much.

The video wasn't there.

_What?_ he thought, nonplussed, and began to feel anxious. _Did something go wrong when I uploaded it?_ He didn't think anything had, but it wasn't impossible. He decided to call YouTube's support team but before he did that, he tried calling the police for an update.

"Los Angeles Police Department."

"Hi, my name's Wade Barnes. I called a couple of hours ago about a missing person?"

The lady on the end of the line hummed like she recognised the file. "Yes, I remember. We're going to need to ask you not to call about this again."

Wade felt his back stiffen. "Excuse me?"

"I said, stop calling about this, sir."

Wade fumbled to rationalise why she might be saying this. It didn't make sense! "Am I calling back about this too early? Should I wait longer?"

"We've dropped the case."

"Has he been found?" he asked optimistically.

She huffed slightly. "I'm not at liberty to divulge that information. Have a nice day." And then she hung up on him.

Wade looked around him, staggered by what had just happened. Well, if the police couldn't - or for some strange reason, wouldn't - help, he'd get his YouTube problem fixed and put the word out himself. And he resolved that later, he'd figure out how to raise a complaint with the police. But first, he'd put that video up.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mark Fischbach (AKA YouTube's Markiplier) doesn't have the strongest faith in his intelligence. So when he is dropped into the middle of a Facility during a serious containment breach and told to escape using his wits, he believes he's in serious trouble.

Mercifully the author chose not to speak to Mark, so as he went in search of the panacea pills he was almost able to forget about their tyranny and imagine he was on his own. Even Billy didn't show its face. If Mark had been able or felt inclined to speak he might have asked the author if they were keeping Billy out of the way as an apology for their actions. But thinking that reminded him of the author's claim to be a mind-reader and he didn't want to think about that, so instead he tried to think about something else.

And definitely _not_ anything private.

The crossroad platform was deserted and Mark walked from one side to the other without incident, his footsteps the only sound as they rang out on the grille flooring. Just as he was about to exit he heard a sound: a few notes of saxophone music. He hesitated over opening the door to the next room and turned to look for the source.

A cute little bath-time duck holding a saxophone in its wings sat on the ledge, pale yellow and noticeably clean against the grubby surface. Mark walked closer, saw that it was reachable and stretched over to pick it up.

His throat stung too much to talk any more so instead he smiled and thought, _Hey little guy, it's good to see you. At least not everything here wants to kill me. So... Zero-Zero-One said they gave me pockets so that I can carry more stuff. Well, you'll fit in just fine. Wanna come along with me and see if you can help?_

The duck, of course, didn't reply but that was okay - Mark was used to having one-sided conversations. He smiled, stuffed the duck into his pocket and walked on.

Since it was out of his line of sight the duck played intermittently as he walked on and Mark started to wonder if it would give him away later if he needed to be quiet. _I hope not,_ he thought with a stab of sadness at the idea of having to give up on the harmless little SCP. _But as soon as Nine-Tailed Fox come I'll figure something out. Maybe if I carry you so I can see you, you'll be quiet._ He decided he could do that, if it seemed worth it at the time. In the meantime, hearing its music was a comfort.

Beyond that, he found the offices. Mark walked slowly down the centre aisle, looking left and right for anything on the desks that might be useful. Most had only a few sheets of papers and stationery on, but one was more of a mess. He approached it and rifled through. A photograph of two children, a plastic toy of a cartoon character, a bottle of moisturiser and a hand mirror. He hesitated for a moment and opened the mirror, considered it for a moment, then shrugged and put that and the moisturiser in his pocket.

He moved on, unsure exactly how these two items would come in handy but confident he hadn't wasted much pocket space even if they didn't.

xXx

Wade called YouTube's technical support team. He was _sure_ he had put the video up the last time, so why it wasn't showing up on his account was beyond him.

"Good afternoon, YouTube tech support, Julia speaking, how can I help?"

"Hi, I'm user LordMinion777. I put up a video earlier today and it's disappeared."

He listened to the quiet sound of a keyboard clicking as Julia checked his account. "I don't see any record of an upload today, sir..." She hesitated. "Are you sure it was today you uploaded it?"

"Definitely," he answered.

"What did you name the file?"

He told her.

She typed a little more. "I don't see any record of it at all. I'm sorry, sir."

"Would there be a record if it was taken down?" He wanted to rule out the idea that it had violated YouTube's upload rules and been taken down for that reason. He didn't think it had, but between the weirdness of the story and the reluctance on the part of the police to help, he felt he had to check every possibility.

"Yes, there would be." She hesitated a little longer. "And you're sure you definitely uploaded it?"

Wade thought he knew what she was asking: she meant, _Did you forget?_ "I'm sure I did, but I'll do it again just to be sure." He hung up.

He uploaded the video again, then logged out and searched for it. He found it. As an afterthought he bookmarked it as proof that he'd uploaded it.

He sat back, the job done, and thought about what else he could do. Well, there was the story. he'd flicked through it but not read it thoroughly. He could read it so that he knew what Mark had got himself into - and he could try and speak to the story's author.

He found the story and clicked the web site's Contact the Author link. On the messenger field he wrote, 

"Hello,

"This is Wade, Mark's friend. Will you please tell me how you came by this story?"

With that done, he returned to the story to read it thoroughly, up to the point where it ended. It hadn't been completely uploaded yet.

The first important thing Wade learned, with a sick and forbidding feeling in his stomach, was that the author knew exactly what he'd been doing, right down to calling Mark's name before letting himself into his apartment.

xXx

Mark found the room storing the healing pills without much drama. He shut himself in, unscrewed the bottle lid, shook out a pill and swallowed it with a wince as it coursed its way painfully down his throat.

He looked at his skin. It didn't improve. _These had better not be duds,_ he thought, right before the answer occurred to him. _They're acting like real-world pills. Okay fine, so they'll take thirty minutes. That's not exactly ideal, but I guess I can stay here a little while and give myself a head start healing._

He sat down cross-legged and settled into the task of thinking about whether or not to disable the warheads. 

_If they go off, thousands of people might die._ He didn't know for sure how close the nearest civilians lived. The Containment Breach game had had a limited environment so there probably weren't any. In the game. It was possible that this world had people living outside of the Facility. He didn't expect SCP-001 to be helpful if he asked so he didn't, and assumed that there would indeed be innocent people living in harm's way.

_If the warheads don't go off, the reptile will escape and kill who knows how many people._ It probably wasn't thousands, he guessed, although he had to admit to himself he wasn't sure. However, without the nukes to destroy the reptile, the Foundation would have to find some other way to contain it, which apparently was hard to do. While they were doing that they would also be busy trying to keep dozens if not hundreds of other sentient, mobile and mostly hostile SCPs contained. Overall, Mark was willing to bet that there were SCPs on the loose who could kill thousands, even millions, of innocents between them.

_Can I afford to let that happen?_ Mark settled down to try and figure out the answer to the dilemma.

xXx

Wade recognised this: it was an ethical dilemma. He could see that Mark had picked up on that too, but the difference between him and his friend was that Mark had got too stressed-out to spot the obvious. The author was playing dirty.

There were too many unknowns to work with this problem properly. Far too many.

Wade watched Mark stumble through the Trolley Experiment, the potential horror of thousands or millions of deaths hanging over his head if he got it wrong. Wade wished he could tell Mark how to think it through. There were several solutions - or at least ways of looking at the problem - that were obvious enough if only you had the right training.

Mark could, for instance, trust that the Facility staff had put contingencies in place and leave the warheads as they were; or pick the danger the population could run away from - they could run from a rampaging lizard but not from a nuke; let the staff handle it by getting out before them so the moral dilemma remained theirs and not Mark's (because Mark didn't really have to take ownership of this. He hadn't installed the warhead in the first place). Overall, Wade would have chosen to leave it on - but that still wasn't the right answer.

There wasn't one. The nearest there was to a right answer, given Mark's circumstances, was not to tire himself out stressing about it. He had plenty more thinking to do before he got out and Wade would have had him stay sharp and alert the whole time. But Mark was no more capable of ignoring the plight of thousands than he was of holding his breath for a week.

Wade steepled his fingers and willed Mark to decide soon.

xXx

Mark's healing was well underway by the time he realised he couldn't choose. He spoke - partly to the author, and partly to himself. "I can't," he said. "I just can't." He stood up and looked miserably at the wall. Zero said nothing so he elaborated. "It doesn't matter what I do, I'll end up killing somebody. I can't deal with having that on my conscience. I'm going to try and re-contain the lizard."

xXx

"What?!" said Wade in horror.

xXx

Up until now Zero's speech had left Mark feeling cold. It was unemotional, clinical, bland, not to mention depressingly silent. So he was amused to see its reaction. Just for once it seemed... worried. Dirt migrated out of the grout between the wall tiles so that it could speak.

I DIDN'T MEAN FOR YOU TO ENGAGE WITH THE REPTILE.  
I URGE YOU TO RECONSIDER.

I'm not reconsidering," he insisted, his mood soaring at the idea that SCP-001 might actually have a weakness. "I can't sentence thousands of people to death. Or millions, or whatever."

I PUT YOU IN THIS SCENARIO TO RAMP UP THE TENSION OF THE STORY.  
I DIDN'T MEAN TO MAKE YOU INTERACT WITH THE REPTILE.  
DON'T. IT'S JUST A MORAL DILEMMA.

"Ha! 'Just' a moral dilemma? You kill me. And anyway," he continued smoothly. Man, being on the front foot in this conversation made him feel so much better! "You're not making me do anything. Autonomy. Free will. Remember?"

That did nothing to calm SCP-001 down, but then, he was having too much fun scaring it. It kept on recycling the same dirt for the conversation, the letters sometimes bigger and thinner, sometimes smaller and fatter, depending on how much it had to say. Its next words were fatter.

IT'S TOO DANGEROUS.  
LEAVE IT ALONE.

"Nope," was all he said as he reopened the bottle of SCP-500's, rattled out a couple to take with him just in case, and left the haven of the small room. "Now. Where is it?" he asked, looking down the corridor.

I REPEAT: IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A MORAL DILEMMA.  
NOT A HEAD TO HEAD BATTLE.

Mark couldn't keep the smile off his face. "You set me up so I had to choose how many people to kill. Well, I don't care for that. I'm solving the problem my own way."

WHAT WAY IS THAT?

"This is rationalfic," he answered and tapped the side of his head. "You figure it out."

It went silent for a few seconds while it presumably read his mind. Or maybe it saw his intentions immediately and took a few seconds to look at the plan he was already putting together.

OH.

"So there." Mark guessed that while Zero was busy poking around in his head it also heard his secret message: _By the way: you're a douche._ Mark continued to wander the hallways, eagerly looking for the lizard's room. It pulled dirt out of the cracks and grout and Larry's appearances as he walked, apparently desperate to talk him out of his plan.

THAT'S VERY AMBITIOUS.

"I'm glad you think so," he agreed lightly and moved on.

It said something else but Mark looked away, determined to ignore it. He had a plan - not much of a plan, he was going to have to assess the environment first - but it was more of a plan that he'd had trying to judge warheads and body counts and the ethics of choosing who to sentence to death. That was philosophy, Wade's training.

Mark had his own training to fall back on.

Obviously frustrated with Mark's refusal to read the walls, Zero put its message on the floor. Mark read it before he could stop himself.

ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO DO THIS?

"Scared for me?" he asked, never breaking stride, eager to keep his momentum going after the past half-hour of fear and frustration and shock and sadness. "Don't be."

YOUR OVERCONFIDENCE IS GOING TO-

He looked away. In fact, he admired the ceiling for a while. It was relatively clean up there, so apparently Zero couldn't drag any dirt up there fast enough to talk.

Eventually he found a balcony above a broad and empty room. He stood at the edge and looked down, assessing the space and its span, the structure of the balcony and how it fit together, and almost managing to avoid feeling afraid about what he was about to do. The terror would come soon enough but for now Mark needed a clear head. He found a flight of stairs and trotted down. It took him into the open space.

Nozzles fixed to pipes above him clicked and a black gas poured out. Mark got caught in the cloud. His eyes streamed and he squinted with pain; he felt his newly-repaired lungs and sinuses burn and backed up fast, blinded with tears but unafraid, at least for the time being. In fact, he was only half-surprised to find that there were gas dispensers here. Half way up the stairs he stopped, let his eyes stream themselves clear as he worked hard not to cough, and assessed the scene again.

The nozzles shut down and the gas gradually dispersed.

A voice shouted. Or rather, it gurgled. It wasn't a human voice, and it definitely wasn't Radical Larry's. He didn't understand what it said but its owner knew he was around - and it was furious!

Mark resisted the urge to call out an answer and looked at the nozzles again. They had to have sensors to be set off. He craned his neck and spotted them: black holes set into the walls. _So if the sensors point_ that _way,_ he thought, _then I can pass under them_ this _way without setting them off._

He went back down, feeling confident, and wove his way through, ducking, stepping over invisible lines, keeping out of the line of the sensors ahead. Once he got to the far wall he inched towards the wide archway that led to the next room.

Finally he saw it! The room was lit with low-energy lights wired to a small generator, and in that light he could see the reptile's tank.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mark Fischbach (AKA YouTube's Markiplier) doesn't have the strongest faith in his intelligence. So when he is dropped into the middle of a Facility during a serious containment breach and told to escape using his wits, he believes he's in serious trouble.

The occupant, on the other hand, couldn't see him. Although the outside was made of glass the inside was furnished with metal sheets, dissolving imperceptibly from the hydrochloric acid bath they were immersed in. He walked around it as quietly as he could. Maybe the reptile knew he'd come this close, maybe not, but he had to hope not. As he walked he looked at the tank, assessing its strengths and weaknesses, eyeing the hinges, the distance between the lid and the ceiling and its base.

The reptile was normally contained very effectively like this, and in the game it only escaped a while after the power had gone down. So that meant...

He reached the opening side of the lid and tip-toed as close as he dared. The locking mechanism was horizontal, half built into the lid and half in the lip of the tank body, and both were bulky enough to contain electronics. A hole in both the lid and body edges meant that if the power failed, the unit could be padlocked shut - and with a very heavy-duty padlock, at that. A tiny, unlit glass bulb embedded in the lid indicated that the power was off.

Mark looked around the base of the tank and then behind him, at the edge of the room. If the tank had a manual locking facility, then where was the padlock? Not within convenient reach like it should have been, that was for sure. There hadn't been any cabinets in the previous room, or upstairs, or just outside the lair, where it might plausibly have been.

_Typical,_ thought Mark. _Trust the Foundation to keep the padlock somewhere completely fucking non-obvious._

The lid of the tank wasn't locked, and it was only a matter of time before its prisoner realised and tried to escape. Or maybe it already knew and was working up the strength to push open the lid. In fact, Mark figured that it probably knew the sound of the locking mechanism very well and likely, it had worked out that it could free itself when the power had gone down. The only thing keeping it from escaping, in that case, was the fact that it was weakened by its immersion in the acid. And that was only going to last until it could crawl out.

Mark's time was limited.

He decided on his course of action and left the room on a new search.

He got to the stop of the stairs again and checked the railings. They wouldn't come apart easily enough for Mark on his own with no special kit. "Hmm. Well, I guess I didn't expect much luck here." He turned to lean on the railings and thought for a minute. Then he clicked his fingers. "I know what I need!" And he set off.

The walk didn't take long. He looked through the reinforced glass at the canteen below and grumbled with disappointment. He'd been hoping the seats were all separate, individual chairs each with four legs. Instead they were long seats all perfectly aligned to the tables. Probably bolted in place: also too immovable for Mark to work with.

But he wasn't beaten yet. "You know, I didn't expect any of this was going to be fun," he said brightly. "Why don't we make it all engineering problems? I could deal with that!"

IT ISN'T MEANT TO BE AN ENGINEERING PROBLEM.

Mark grinned. "Oh, and I could do with a broom or a mop. Did you put a closet anywhere around here for that kind of stuff? I mean, there's got to be some, to clean Billy's cell. I take it he still keeps filling it up like he does in the game with... what was it? Blood and poop?"

TAKE A LOOK. FIND ONE.

"Aww, come on, don't drop your crumpets. Be a good sport!"

ALL RIGHT, JUST THIS ONCE.  
JUST TO KEEP UP THE PACE OF THE NARRATIVE.

A grimy arrow appeared on the wall, pointing to a door. He followed it and immediately saw what he was looking for. "Aha! Thank you!" He opened the closet door and was delighted to see half a dozen long-handled brushes and mops inside. He took them all out and settled them against his shoulder, and then wandered off. "You take this story of yours very seriously, don't you?"

Zero said nothing.

"Don't think I'm not onto you." Mark suspected he could get away with saying that if he said it playfully. But all the same, it was weird how much the author seemed to stress about the story. Come to think of it, it was weird that it seemed to care about his welfare given the experiences it had put him through. "I'll solve this puzzle soon enough, the whole thing."

Zero once again said nothing.

"And that's what I call a suspicious silence." When that didn't get a reaction he sighed, but then he reached his third destination. "And now to call in here..."

xXx

Wade's reading of the story left him very worried indeed. If Mark was really going through all of that stuff... And it wasn't just Mark he was worried for - he seemed to be under surveillance too. He looked up the re-loaded Markiplier Missing video. It was gone. He checked the bookmark he'd created. The bookmark was still there, but the file it was supposed to link to was missing.

He ran his hands over his face, at a loss. _What the hell am I supposed to do now?_

He checked for a reply from the author. To his surprise there was one, so he opened it. There was no introduction or sign-off, it only said:

"Create a trail to yourself to find Mark."

Wade had taken philosophy classes at university but this made no sense to him. It could have meant all sorts of things depending on what he chose to read into it. No, Wade needed the author to speak more plainly than that. He clicked Reply.

"Please say what you mean clearly. Mark is in danger so I need you to stop being cryptic."

He sent that and hoped they would reply. In the meantime he returned to the problem of his disappearing video.

A part of him wanted to believe that somebody was holding him back deliberately from finding Mark, but that didn't mean that was true. He didn't know what to make of the police's refusal to help. The upload disappearing from his YouTube account could have been a technical problem, even though it had happened twice. Couldn't it? He'd never heard of it happening, before.

Wade thought of a way around that, and then he realised that if he was going to solve the problem he could solve it much, much more efficiently than that. Wade himself had never been naturally gregarious but Mark was, and just about every one of Mark's friends who had a popular YouTube account would have heard of Wade. If he couldn't upload something himself...

He tried to kick the computer back into action. The screen froze. He gave it a while to catch up with itself but after ten minutes it was still frozen. He shut it down and started it up again. That didn't work either - nothing would load up.

Wade had had enough of this! He got up from his chair and looked around his room for cameras or mics installed by somebody else, but it was hopeless - there were too many hiding places.

"Can you hear me?" he asked the room, aware that everything he said and did now would be recorded in the story. He didn't care. "Are you listening to me? Did you do this to my computer?"

He was answered by a knock on the door and nearly jumped out of his skin.

xXx

He put the first broom into the Clockworks booth and turned the dial to Very Fine, then stood back while the machine clunked and ground and turned the broom into something better. The door opened and he went to retrieve it.

It was now ergonomically-shaped.

"Hmm. Nope." He put it to one side and tried again with another. This one came out sprouting small branches with pine needles. "Nope," he repeated, and tried another.

The third one was exactly what he'd been hoping for. The handle was still made of wood but where it had been cheap, fast-grown pine, now it was something much denser-grained. Stronger. "Heavy," he commented approvingly, and left the Clockworks room.

Mark returned to the reptile's lair and went down to the gas antechamber. He manhandled the broom as he stepped over the gas nozzle sensor paths, and walked softly into the reptile's main containment room.

The lid was a little way up. Mark froze and then approached cautiously on the hinge side. He could smell the acid, sharp and irritating, along with the sickly-sweet smell of corroded flesh. It was enough to make the half-Korean shudder with disgust, but not enough to stop him.

The reptile coughed wetly and a spray of hydrochloric acid splattered onto the floor. It said something but Mark didn't catch what it said. Probably too much of its mouth was burned away and hadn't regenerated yet. As he came around to face it, he saw its teeth: yellow, etched, and longer than he'd expected. But then, with the flesh of its gums melted away, of course they would look extra-long. It tried to hiss, its jaws open in warning, but in effect it could only gargle. Its tongue was a painful mess - but Mark couldn't afford to feel sorry for the creature.

He felt light-headed from fear but his mind worked fast. "Not got your tongue back yet?" he asked, to open up a conversation if nothing else.

It tried to answer. The words came out as a mangled, inarticulate growl.

Mark walked softly until he was directly in front of the reptile, holding the broom low so the reptile wouldn't see it.

It wouldn't be able to see anyway, he noted: its eyes were still burned away. Its chin rested on its claws which were hooked over the edge of the tank. It was apparently resting like that and waiting for its claws and head to heal.

As if to prove his theory it threw one tattered foreleg over the edge and let it hang while it healed.

"Nuh-uh. Not today," said Mark and used the end of the broom to poke the reptile back down into the acid.

As soon as it understood what he was doing it clamped its jaws around the broom-head and shook it, albeit weakly. As powerful as its long, reptilian body would have been had it been healthy, it was too badly cauterised to fight very hard. Its retaliation wasn't enough to deflect Mark, so he managed to drive the SCP back down into its bath. The lid clunked down. Mark stepped forward, his hands shaking but determined that he would not be deterred, and slotted the broom through the hole in the padlock hole in the handle.

The reptile desperately tried pushing the lid open again before the few of its newly re-healed muscles burned away again.

Mark stood back and scrutinised his handiwork, hands on hips, trying to figure out how he felt about all of this. Once again, the reptile wasn't inherently evil, only a naturally-aggressive living thing. Did it deserve this treatment? He thought about the humans it would kill if left to escape.

_I can't afford to think like this,_ he decided, and turned away, pushing his feelings of guilt to the back of his mind. He left the reptile behind, and the gas nozzles, and the sensors, content he'd be safe, at least from this particular SCP. No, this monster was a blight on the world and had to be kept locked up. On his way up he looked at the wall again. "So I guess I'm looking for the exit now?" he offered.

IF YOU DEEM THAT TO BE YOUR NEXT TASK.

"Yep. I sure do," he answered as he reached the top of the stairs and left the reptile's lair entirely.

Half way down the corridor he heard another metallic clang in the room ahead and stopped. "What is that?" He crept forward, opened the door and hid by the threshold. He looked through, tense and ready to run away... and then relaxed.

A grille lay on the floor and next to it, the ventilation duct it had come from. "I saw this earlier. Who or what keeps doing this?" Presumably it was an SCP. He was just considering that when he blinked.

Billy appeared into the middle of the room about two meters away from the duct, and he gasped and leapt back. In a flash he realised the truth: "Right! So you've been travelling in the air ducts. Of course - that's how you get to keep ambushing me all the time! Wait, is that how you got around in the game?" It made sense. He glanced at the grille on the floor. _So this game's being more realistic again. Billy travels in the vents and everywhere he goes, he pushes out the grilles and doesn't bother putting them back in place. I guess he wouldn't bother._

"So that's how you do it, Billy." He backed away carefully, single-blinking, until he'd retreated to the previous room again. He hastened in a different direction, anything to get further away from the statue.

WORKING OUT BILLY'S AMBUSHING TECHNIQUE: 75 POINTS.

"Yep - whatever," he grumbled. "Actually, why don't we drop the points idea? It sucks donkey dong."

AS YOU WISH.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mark Fischbach (AKA YouTube's Markiplier) doesn't have the strongest faith in his intelligence. So when he is dropped into the middle of a Facility during a serious containment breach and told to escape using his wits, he believes he's in serious trouble.

Wade armed himself with a baseball bat and went to answer the door. 

A broad-shouldered man in a suit stood there on his doorstep, flanked by two soldiers in dark dress. "Mr. Barnes," said the man in greeting. He seemed like the kind of man who took no nonsense, his gaze steely and his hair greyed from years in some high-stress job or other, and Wade decided on the spot that he would do his best not to get on the guy's wrong side.

But then something happened that Wade didn't understand. He felt a lurch, almost like being in an elevator, but not quite as physical. He felt the need to steady himself and gripped the edge of the door to keep from falling over. Maybe he'd stood up too fast and was suffering from a dizzy spell? He wasn't sure. But then it went away and he wondered if he hadn't imagined it.

xXx

Mark stopped in mid-stride as he got light-headed for a fraction of a second, so fast that he only really registered it in retrospect. He frowned and looked around, wondering whether it was something worth questioning Zero about. Then he decided against it and walked on.

xXx

Wade put the baseball bat down out of sight. It wasn't that he felt any safer, it was just that arming himself against two armed soldiers seemed like a very bad idea. "Yes?" he asked, trying not to sound too apprehensive.

"I've come to talk to you about the issue at hand," said the man, and Wade instantly got the impression he was trying to give away as little information as possible. "May I come in?"

The question sounded less like a request for permission and more like a formality. Wade didn't like it one bit and eyed the two soldiers. "Okay," he said reluctantly and let the man in. The soldiers turned and waited at either side of his door as if guarding it, and Wade realised with a sick feeling that that was exactly what they were doing.

Before Wade could ask the man what he was doing at his house, the visitor said, "I'll get straight to the point. I have a strong lead regarding Mr. Fischbach's location."

Despite the situation Wade felt a rush of relief. "You do?" he asked before he could stop himself: this man gave the impression that he didn't like to waste words. "Where is he? And who are you, anyway?"

The man turned to face him, his hands clasped behind his back, his salt-and-pepper hair short and austere. "I'm going to need to ask you to come with us."

 _What?_ "Where?" he asked guardedly, stuck somewhere between fear of this man and suspicion. If he went, would he be putting himself into Mark's situation? Would he become helpless too and in need of rescue?

The man's expression was unreadable. "I'll need to hold off on telling you until we get there. It's classified."

"Did you have something to do with my YouTube videos going down?"

The man graced him with a humourless smile. "Yes."

Wade decided on the spot to ask another question: although the man had said that a lot of this information was classified, he might be able to tell from the nature of the man's answer, what the answer to the question itself may be. "Have you spoken to the author of the story?"

The man gave another of those grim smiles and extended a hand in the direction of the front door as if to guide Wade to leave. "As I said before, Mr. Barnes, I'd like to bring you in to talk more about this."

Naturally, Wade hated the idea of a stranger coming into his house and telling him what to do, but then again, it sounded like this was going to lead him to Mark. He tried to strike a balance. "I need to know who you are before I agree to come with you."

"I appreciate your reluctance, Mr. Barnes, but the situation we're dealing with is too sensitive for us to discuss outside of a secure environment. I need to ask you to trust us."

Wade felt like he was pushing it when he said, "That's just it. I don't."

The man looked at him kindly. "Let me put it this way. We need to take you with us enough that if you refuse, my men can and will take you by force. Now, I'll offer you the choice one last time: please will you come peacefully?"

 _Don't you mean the illusion of a choice?_ "Okay," he said reluctantly.

The man nodded his acceptance of Wade's decision. "I'd also like to ask you to bring a change of clothes for Mr. Fischbach."

xXx

Mark passed by a doorway that was already open, which at the Facility was pretty unusual in itself, and happened to glance in as he went.

Something black and white flashed in his vision and he darted for the cover of the other side of the doorway. Out of sight of the thing, he registered that he had heard a frightened gasp.

The resident SCP's plaque was mounted on the wall next to him so he read it, hoping against hope that what he had seen hadn't doomed him in some way. But when he saw its colloquial name he realised that he was safe. A smile broke out on his face - he already knew about this one! He straightened his overalls, decided there wasn't very much he could do about the blood, ran his fingers through his hair and thanked his good fortune he had his voice back. He pulled on the confident mantle of Markiplier, and then he walked in. 

"Well, hello baby! How are you doin'?" he boomed, projecting his voice to sound as confident as possible. As he approached he made a point of looking self-assured but watched for her reaction.

People usually reacted very well to his rich and lively baritone and he saw Cassy's initial look of astonishment. But then she ducked fearfully back against her canvas. "Who are you?" she asked, looking around as if for an escape route. But of course, being just a drawing there was nowhere she could go.

Mark stopped in his tracks, half a room away from her. "My name's Mark," he answered more gently.

"Hello Mark," she said automatically, still terrified. When she'd finished her fruitless search for a means of escape she faced him, fear still etched into her features. "Um... You're a D-class, aren't you?"

Mark got the impression she was stalling and trying to reason with him, the way people sometimes did if they got mugged on their way home after dark. He took a breath as he anticipated a struggle to explain that he wasn't a dangerous criminal. "I'm dressed as one," he offered, "but I'm not."

"You're not really a D-class?" she echoed guardedly. He didn't think she quite believed him.

"No, absolutely not," he answered, staying at a distance that appeared to feel safer to her.

The conversation rolled to a halt and the pair regarded each other, each waiting for the other to make the next move. And then Mark noticed something. Maybe it was her drawn expression or the lack of animation in her movements. Mark had seen something like it before.

Cassy lowered her gaze and hugged herself for a second, and then he had it: _You're depressed._ Wade had had a tendency to get like this before he'd found Molly. Mark himself wasn't generally prone to depression, except for that one patch in his life four years previously when everything had fallen apart, but in those times when his friend had lost hope, he had learned ways to be there for him.

"You look tired," he said.

Cassy looked at him with surprise, and then... and then she talked.

"There's a lot of scientists and doctors here," she began hesitantly. "They're responsible for looking after me and I really appreciate it, and it pretty much works out, but sometimes it's difficult." She stopped and watched him for his reaction.

"Oh yeah?" he prompted. He didn't say anything else yet. Staying so quiet didn't come naturally to him _at all_ , but he'd learned from his quieter friends that sometimes, the less he said, the better they felt for being given the space to talk.

"It's like, I don't need to eat or sleep or go to the bathroom, so I don't need that kind of care. It's mainly psychological stuff for me. I need to have things to do, and they get me that. They bring me pages to walk onto where I can take walks in the countryside or fix cars or explore Escher drawings, and that's great. Really great. But I..." Her breathing became laboured as her thoughts distressed her. She calmed herself down and continued. "I don't get to talk to people very much. They're busy, so we don't get to just sit and talk. The activities aren't always enough, but I don't feel like I can complain. Not really."

"That sounds really tough," Mark said.

Cassy examined her hands. "A few of the team used to spend their lunch hours with me. That was nice. But it stopped because the director found out. Apparently it's the organisation's policy that they're not allowed to spend unofficial time in my company because I'm an SCP. Apparently I might contaminate the staff. Please don't ask me how."

Mark felt offended for Cassy. "He said that?"

"They did as he told them. And I know I'm being silly, but I wonder sometimes if... if..." She looked away and he thought she was fighting tears.

He would have given her a searching look, but since she didn't look at him he eventually asked, "If... what?"

She gulped and wiped her cheek. "If they were secretly relieved they didn't have to be around me any more."

Mark felt his throat go tense. "Aww, no. Cassy, don't think like that." Hearing other peoples' troubles always made him well up.

Cassy looked at him like she'd needed to hear that. "It's just that I hate being on paper. I can't go anywhere by myself. Well, I can if they give me somewhere exciting to go, but I'm still in this room, aren't I? And I'm-" She stopped herself and looked at Mark, seemed to weigh something up, and cautiously spoke again, watching him carefully as she did. "I'm vulnerable. I'm only ink on paper, and I can probably tear or get soggy and melt. I don't want that to happen."

Mark wasn't sure what to say to that. The idea of it made him sick to his stomach.

She saw the face he made at the idea, and seemed to relax. She looked away again but her eyes flickered in his direction. Was she hiding something? Conflicted, maybe?

"What is it?" he prompted.

Cassy looked cautious again, but he got the feeling that whatever block was preventing her from being totally honest was coming down. She cleared her throat and spoke again. "Some of the male staff flirt with me," she said, trying to sound matter-of-fact. "And I'm not sure if I really want that. I don't know, maybe I'm talking Greek," she back-tracked, looking at him with a flippant smile.

Mark's first reaction was to wonder if she meant she swung the other way, but he felt like that wasn't the best thing to say. He searched for some other way to respond. "But since they don't spend as much time with you any more, you kind of miss it?" Then he felt the need to back-track too, shrugged and made his best I'm-an-idiot face. "Maybe? I don't know."

Somehow, that seemed to be the right reaction. She laughed, relaxing fully at last. "Yeah, that's kind of it! And then there's the female staff, and they get so much more freedom about how they react to the guys, and I get left behind."

Mark groaned sympathetically. "God damnit!" 

She laughed a little more, but then the tears started up again. "It's not that I'm ungrateful for everything they do. They do a lot! I'm grateful, honest, I am. They care for me and I'm safe. That's the important thing, right?"

Well, that was true. Ish. "It's _one_ of the important things," he suggested.

"Yeah," she said, pleased that he'd given her permission to acknowledge this. "And the other stuff's important too." She paused in her commentary and looked away, thinking about everything they'd talked about.

"That sounds really tough," said Mark once the silence had been drawn out a few seconds. "I'm sorry you have to deal with all that."

Cassy gurgled the way a person did when they were crying and laughing at the same time, and wiped her eyes. "Sorry for talking so much."

Mark was familiar with the apology-after-the-outpouring too. "Not at all," he answered firmly. "You sounded like you needed to talk. I'm glad I could listen."

She offered him a salty grin and sniffed. She looked up and around as if appraising her surroundings and he got the impression she was drawing a line under the conversation so far. "What I wouldn't give to get out of these four walls, just once. I envy you."

"Sure," he agreed, following her gaze. "It's pretty bland in here. They could at least put up some art for you to look at."

She laughed bitterly, as if this was a tasteless joke.

The conversation came to a stop again.

Mark assessed the situation. Cassy was a sweet girl and he didn't really want to move on and leave her by herself, but he was going to have to sooner or later. "Do you want to come with me?" he asked, before he knew he had said it.

She looked at him in shock. "Really?" He spotted a glimmer of hope in her eyes.

He ran with it. "Come on, it'll be fun!"

She looked doubtful. "Um..." she said, and he suspected she was stalling.

He gave her an enquiring look, unwilling to push her too hard.

"Where did that bloodstain come from?" She pointed to the spray of dark red across Mark's overalls.

He grimaced at the memory, and then shared his own story. "I found myself in the middle of this Facility earlier today without any idea how I got here. I know what this place is and I know about the SCPs here, but to me it's always been a game, of a sort. And now I'm in the place of the main character and I have to get out. I know how the character gets out in the game, but it's all behaving differently for me. I'm having to do it differently."

"Some game," she said, enraptured by his story.

"A horror game," Mark elaborated. He felt his face and chest tense up, and forced himself to breathe. When he'd managed to relax he continued. "There's a living corpse here. Larry. He started stalking me. He's worse in this scenario than in the game so I had to get him back in his cage. You... Oh God, Cassy, you have to torture a guy and use him as bait." He lost control of his breathing for a moment and paused in his story for a while until he'd managed to get it under control again. "I couldn't do it."

"What did you do?"

"Let the bait guy go. He didn't trust me and ran away."

"How come?" She sounded genuinely puzzled.

"My hair," he answered, and wondered if, now that he'd drawn attention to it, Cassy would begin to suspect him again. He didn't want to lose this thread of friendship, but how could he be anything less than honest with his new friend?

She took in the sight of his red-dyed hair. "What about it?"

"He didn't say, exactly. I think he wondered how I'd managed to dye my hair in prison. But that's just it: I've never been in prison, I just arrived here."

"I believe you," she said simply.


	12. Capter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mark Fischbach (AKA YouTube's Markiplier) doesn't have the strongest faith in his intelligence. So when he is dropped into the middle of a Facility during a serious containment breach and told to escape using his wits, he believes he's in serious trouble.

Mark looked at her in shock. "You do?"

"Sure." The look on Cassy's face implied she wasn't sure why Jay had had such a problem.

Mark tried to figure out her line of thinking. When it didn't come to him immediately he said, "Why?"

"Because your roots haven't grown in. It's simple," she continued when Mark looked blankly at her. "It takes time to go through whatever D-classes have to go through to get here, right? Commit a crime, get caught, go through the judicial system, go to prison, get selected for the D-class programme... It must take a while. Even if you dyed your hair - and you've done it properly, you've used bleach and everything. Why would you do that while you were being tried for a serious crime? Most people would be too stressed-out to bother - even if you dyed it at the latest possible time, you'd never have got here before your roots grew in. Probably," she added, looking curiously at him. But if anything she seemed more convinced of his harmlessness than before.

Mark felt his whole body relax. "Thank you," he said. And he meant it.

They regarded each other in silence for a moment. Far from her first reaction to him, when she'd kept him talking while looking for a way to escape, Cassy was looking him straight in the eye and smiling. 

"What did you do instead?"

"There's another SCP here. Shy Guy. I took him to the torture device and used him as bait instead. I... I didn't want to hurt him, but I had to do something. Larry's serious, here. I think he liked playing with me, but I don't think he'd let me walk out the door."

"Sure," Cassy answered. "Cats like chasing mice but only as long as they don't think the mouse can get away. Right?"

"Right!" answered Mark. Then he laughed. "I'm just blown away by the fact that you trust me."

Cassy shrugged. "There's some strange things under this roof. I'm one of them."

Mark smiled his agreement. "The trouble was, when I was half-way to getting Shy Guy into Larry's cage, we caught up with the original bait. Jay. And Jay upset Shy Guy, who killed him. It was pretty messy. I got caught in the crossfire." Mark pulled at his overalls to indicate the blood as he said this, and found himself tailing off as he thought back to when it had happened, and how much it had shaken him.

Cassy watched as he retreated into this memory and spoke to him, keen to drag him back out before he got in too deep. "You said you wanted me to come with you."

It worked, and Mark eagerly latched on to her suggestion. "Yeah. If you want to."

Cassy smiled shyly. "I shouldn't, not really," she said eventually. "There isn't a rule for it, but I don't think it's allowed."

"Because the doctors wouldn't like it?" he suggested.

He read her body language as undecided for a second before her usual worried look returned. "It's dangerous out there," she said uncertainly. "And like I said, I'm not very, well..." She pressed at her backing paper and it bowed slightly. "Robust."

That gave Mark an idea and he backed off a step. "You wait right there," he said and left the room to retrace his steps. Two rooms back he'd seen a clipboard. He hadn't deemed it useful so he'd left it behind but for Cassy it would be perfect. He hurried to return. "Your carriage awaits!" he announced, brandishing it.

"Oh!" she said and looked tentatively excited. "But I'll still be vulnerable. You promise to be careful?"

"Of course," he soothed, taking off the top sheet and turning it over so she could inhabit the back. He put the paper next to her canvas and waited for her to transfer over. Then he pinned the paper to the clipboard and tucked it against his waist. "Comfortable?"

She answered with a grin and he left the room and continued down the corridor.

She looked everywhere as Mark carried her along, at everything, every bit as curious as she was nervous. She reminded him of a child looking out the window during a car ride. "What's happened, anyway? The lights went off and my cell door opened and I keep hearing stone scraping."

"Well, it's like this," he answered and explained about the containment breach.

By the time he'd finished she was staring at him. "Gosh. So that's why you had to put Larry back? I wonder who did all this?" she commented as she re-tied her ponytail.

"A group called the Chaos Insurgency."

"Oh." They both went silent for a short while before Cassy thought of something else to say. "So who are you, in your normal life?"

"I'm a... well, I'm an entertainer. Or I try to be, anyway."

She grinned at this. "I can believe that. I wonder how you got here."

"I was put here by an SCP. Zero-Zero-One. It basically told me to figure out for myself how to escape safely."

"Really? That wasn't very nice."

"No ma'am, it was not. It did it for entertainment, so it told me." He sighed at the irony of this.

As Mark spoke, the saxophone duck resumed playing its music in his pocket. Cassy listened to him speak but he could see that she was distracted by the music. She craned her neck to figure out where it was coming from. He was pretty much able to pinpoint the moment she figured out where because she retreated back to the middle of her page, an awkward expression on her face.

She seemed to think about what to say, almost decided against saying it, and then thought about it again. Finally she said hesitantly, "I don't know how to say this without it coming out wrong, so I'm just going to say it, but... do you have a _saxophone_ in your pants?"

He laughed and she joined in, looking somewhat embarrassed and muttering, "Sorry, I didn't mean that to sound..." He reached into his pocket, pulled out the duck and showed it to her.

She regarded the duck and then gave him a dry look. "You keep a saxophone-playing duck in your pocket? Well, that makes a lot of sense."

He grinned at her. "I know it does."

"Why do you have it?"

"Well, when Zero told me to escape I figured I should keep anything with me that I found on my way that might be useful."

"How will a musical duck help?"

"I don't know, but escaping SCPs can be a weird business, and-"

A muffled voice spoke over the speaker system. "Mobile Task Force Nine Tailed Fox are now at the Facility."

Mark felt himself sag. "Great," he said flatly.

"What was that?" she asked, sensing his annoyance.

"Security. They're very well-trained and..." He was going to say 'armed', but he doubted Cassy would find that reassuring given the situation. "...and I need to keep out of their way."

Mark turned his mind to the problem of evading Nine Tailed Fox. He knew he'd have to figure out how to get past them soon. Maybe, in the array of stuff he had in his pockets, there was a way of escaping the fate of getting shot. But if he was honest with himself, he had no idea what he might use or how. The soldiers had years of military training apiece - never mind as a team working together - and he hadn't spent a single day in the army. _But they'll have a system for locking down the Facility,_ he reasoned, _and it's probably designed to be as efficient as possible, which means there might be ways to get through it. Should I try and figure it out? Maybe get past without them seeing me?_

It seemed like a gamble, like trusting random chance. Mark had never liked chance.

He found a doorway leading to a cramped little office. "Come on," he said to Cassy, "let's see if we can find anything useful in here."

The desk was loaded up with forms and general office items so he put Cassy's clipboard down so he could rifle through it a little faster. Then he felt an impulse to look up. He did, and recognised where he was: the control room for the haunted coffin. He pulled his gaze back down to the desk, felt the urge to look up again and fought it. He felt his jaw clenching and his brow creasing, but fighting it wasn't too hard.

He glanced at Cassy and saw her staring wide-eyed at the monitor. He blocked her vision with his hand. She blinked and shook her head as if she had a fly in her ear.

"Be careful," he warned. "It shows you bad things if you look at it for too long."

"Bad things? How bad?"

"I don't know exactly, but they make you go crazy."

She looked alarmed. "Oh," she said and sat down, her back to the monitor. Despite the oddity of the angle her rendering looked as flawless as always. "Thanks for the warning."

"You're welcome," he said distractedly, looking in a drawer and wondering if a sharpie could be in any way useful.

At that moment a door in the main corridor slid open and somebody dressed in black walked through.

 _Nine Tailed Fox!_ He bolted instinctively for the nearest hiding place: the stairs leading down to the coffin. A few steps down he realised he'd left Cassy behind, took one step back up, decided the team would shoot him if they saw him but that they wouldn't harm Cassy because she was one of the things they were here to protect, and hurried down the stairs as silently as he could manage.

He got to the bottom and was half-way along the tunnel joining the stairs to the coffin's room when he became aware he was panicking - and that panic was likely to get him killed. He froze. _I should have hidden under the stairs,_ he thought for half a second, realised he'd be too easy to see there since the stairs were made of metal bars, and ran onwards.

The stairs started to rattle with the heavy footfalls of the soldiers, and Mark raced into the containment room. Maybe there'd be a pillar or something he could hide behind. He did a quick sweep of the room, his heart pounding. He might have hidden behind the pedestal itself but surely the Task Force would come into the room and check - and then he'd be dead.

 _What am I supposed to do?_ he begged Zero-Zero-One, although he didn't wait for an answer. _Oh God, I'm trapped! I'm dead! There's nowhere to hide in here!_

And then his eyes fell on the coffin.

He recoiled from it. _No,_ he insisted. _No ding-dong damn way._

The footsteps got lower on the stairwell. He could see their feet - there were two soldiers on their way.

The coffin supposedly acted normal to anyone visiting it in the flesh, so to speak. Supposedly, it wouldn't drive him mad if he...

He thought he heard Cassy shouting, her words hard to decipher from this distance. The men tramped a little lower, searching for anybody who might be hiding in the tunnel.

Mark had no time to lose. He opened the coffin lid, stepped onto the platform and crammed himself inside. He held his breath and pulled the lid closed, and covered his mouth with his hands to stop himself from whimpering.

He clamped his eyes shut and clenched his fists. He heard footsteps outside. They stopped for a moment and then walked around the room, measured and calm and probably in just the right state of mind to think to open the coffin door and check for imposters, like stupid gamers who'd been given only a few seconds to make snap decisions.

Mark breathed shallow, only daring to allow himself the tiniest bit of air. It wasn't just that he didn't want to be heard breathing, it was that he had no idea what kind of evil resided in the coffin and the idea of inhaling it horrified him.

The Task Forcers' boots were heavy and he found it fairly easy to track where in the room they were. He imagined what they might be thinking, tried to guess which way they might be looking - anything to distract himself from what he'd done to hide.

Something touched the small of his back and he almost launched himself out of the coffin, soldiers or not. Then he realised it was a bead of sweat. He fought every instinct to yell, gritted his teeth and breathed as softly as he could.

_There's nobody here, there's nobody here, just go back the way you came, let me escape please don't kill me..._

Mark noticed that he was clenching so hard all over that he was making himself short of breath. He forced himself to relax but then found himself trembling instead. In a flash he tensed again, sweat tickling his skin all over.

_Go away go away go away..._

The boots walked out of the containment room and into the corridor, taking their own sweet time. Mark mentally willed them to take another step, and then another, and another. An eternity later he heard their boots making their way up the metal stairs, clanging as they went.

Mark put his hands to the inside of the lid ready to get out but he didn't dare quite yet. And still he wondered what... whatever demon lived in this coffin made of his intrusion. The footsteps went out of hearing range, leaving just a deathly silence, not even Cassy's shouting. Mark counted to twenty to make sure they were really gone and then left the coffin in a kind of stupor.

He walked fast but silent the way he'd come, up the stairs two at a time, not daring to tremble in case it made his footsteps louder than absolutely necessary. He shielded his vision from the surveillance screen above, crossed the office in two seconds flat, and swung around the doorway to the opposite side of the wall where maybe, just maybe, this particular part of the nightmare would end.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mark Fischbach (AKA YouTube's Markiplier) doesn't have the strongest faith in his intelligence. So when he is dropped into the middle of a Facility during a serious containment breach and told to escape using his wits, he believes he's in serious trouble.

Mark could hear his heartbeat in his temples, and he hoped it was just mundane stress and not the coffin demon's revenge. His overalls clung to his back with sweat. Finally out of immediate danger he leaned on the fronts of his legs with his hands, dry-heaved a few times, came over dizzy and sank heavily to the floor.

"What the hell did- Why did you put me through _that?!_ Was that some kind of sick joke?" he whispered to SCP-001 in case any of the Task Force were still near enough to hear him. "First the pocket dimension, then Shy Guy and now _this?_ Seriously, can you not? I can't do another thing like that, honestly, please..."

IT WAS INDEED AN ORDEAL.

" _Yes,_ it was." He did nothing for a moment, just sat and breathed and let his system calm down. The pumping in his head lessened and his mind cleared but didn't really slow down, and he eventually decided he wasn't going to be able to calm down any more than that. He wasn't sure it was safe to. But despite his fear there was one thing that made him feel sad. "They took Cassy away."

YES.  
YOU COULD NOT HAVE TAKEN HER OUT OF THE FACILITY WITH YOU.  
NOT IN GOOD CONSCIENCE.

"And you'd know all about conscience," he snarked.

SCP-001 said nothing to that.

"What happens next?"

WHAT DO YOU WISH TO HAPPEN NEXT?

"A rest," he answered immediately. "When does chapter one end? I really need a break."

YOU ARE ALREADY IN CHAPTER 13, MARKIPLIER.

He slumped, as much as it was possible to. "Are you kidding me? I was hoping you'd let me take a break between chapters. It feels like I've been going forever. How many chapters are there going to be?"

I DON'T KNOW, I DON'T KEEP TRACK OF THAT WHEN WRITING. HOW LONG IS A PIECE OF STRING?

He sighed. "I need a break. Zero, I can't keep going like this. I'm going to sit here a while."

SCP-001 said nothing, but Billy scraped around beyond the wall.

"Are you threatening me? Over a short break? I'm asking for ten minutes. Ten damn minutes!"

AND I AM SAYING NO.

"Why? What's it to you? Can't you just, I don't know, do a scene break or something?"

MY RULES APPLY.  
FIGURE OUT A WAY OF SECURING A REST FOR YOURSELF OR YOU GET NONE.

Mark glared at Zero's words. There had to be a way of getting bargaining power with the SCP, there had to be. Mark thought. What did writers not like? He thought about the age restriction system - was there something in that he could use? He didn't know it like the back of his hand but he had a rough idea. They generally warned of sex, violence or drug use.

Mark balked at the idea of engaging in any pornographic activity and he was already in a horror story - what sort of violence could he commit to beat Shy Guy's rage? What could he do that was extreme enough to displease _this_ author? He couldn't imagine; he didn't want to be able to imagine.

But then again, some media didn't like to portray blood...

I ALREADY MENTIONED BLOOD SEVERAL TIMES IN THE STORY.  
YOU'VE EVEN GOT SOME ON YOU.  
TRY AGAIN.

"Uh huh," he fumed, furious about the casual mind-reading. Then he had it: the confiscated spliffs from the game! "So, Zero. What about the two joints?"

WHAT ABOUT THEM?

"This story's violent, but I bet you don't want drugs in it! What will happen to your story if I go get one and light up?" Now that he said it, it felt like a weak proposition. How upset could a horror author be by a few puffs on a spliff? But if there was any chance it would work he felt he had to try. And he was clearly going to have to smoke as little as possible to keep a sharp mind.

INTERESTING PROBLEM-SOLVING, MARK.

In Mark's book that sounded like Zero was backed into a corner. "Thank you. Well, I guess I'll head on down there now!"

HOWEVER, I WILL TAKE THE UNUSUAL STEP OF INFORMING YOU THAT IT WILL NOT WORK.  
YOU WILL NOT FIND YOURSELF IN A SITUATION IN THIS STORY IN WHICH SEX OR DRUGS ARE THE BEST SOLUTION.  
I AM DELIBERATELY WRITING PROBLEMS THAT CAN BE SOLVED IN OTHER WAYS.  
I PRESUME YOU WOULD NOT WANT TO BE FORCED TO ENGAGE IN THESE THINGS.

"Well, here's the thing. I don't want to get stuck in possessed coffins either, but you forced me to do that!"

YOU MAY YET HAVE COME UP WITH A DIFFERENT SOLUTION.  
I AM NOT PRETENDING TO HAVE ALL OF THE ANSWERS, MARKIPLIER.  
IN ANY CASE, IT MAY HELP YOU TO KNOW THAT THE ROOM HOUSING THE CONFISCATED JOINTS DOES NOT CONTAIN ANY LIGHTERS OR MATCHES.

Just for a moment Mark could think of nothing to say, so instead he groaned with frustration, rested his brow on his forearms and thought. If he couldn't put something Zero _didn't_ want in the story, could he get bargaining power by offering to put something in that it _did_ want?

Zero-Zero-One clearly wanted a good story. A story meant drama, and lots of it. But Mark was exhausted, mentally if not physically, and if he was to finish getting out he needed a break. He figured Zero-Zero-One probably already knew what he wanted from reading his mind but he felt more comfortable pretending he had to talk for them to hear.

Billy scraped again.

Mark deliberately avoided reacting to the noise, but he figured that getting a rest meant being out of Billy's reach. _Where can't Billy go?_ He ran through a mental list of places he'd been with no air ducts. The clockwork machine room, the SCP-500 room... He narrowed his eyes and then discarded the machine room. Nine Tailed Fox were probably still due to look in there. They were meant to be doing a sweep of the Facility, from left to right as far as he could tell, and that meant the rooms to his left were probably safe.

He got to his feet and walked to the left-hand doorway, but listened carefully first for members of the unit. He heard none and went through, and saw a closed door to a room. The director's office! _That's a safe one, isn't it?_ Mark eagerly pressed his omnicard to the door lock.

He shut the door behind him and appraised the room: some shelves with the two spliffs and a radio, and a desk - and on the desk, a brown bag that looked like it contained someone's lunch. The director's, obviously.

Mark sat behind the desk and checked the bag. Yes, it was a meal: a bacon sandwich and a bottle of water.

Okay," he said, addressing the wall with all the calm and assertiveness he could manage. "I last ate a few hours ago. I'm not hungry but I think I should eat. I'm going to eat this and you're not going to disturb me until I've finished."

AGREED.  
BUT DO NOT BELIEVE YOU CAN HOLD A CRUST BACK AND REMAIN SAFE FOR THE REST OF THE STORY JUST BECAUSE TECHNICALLY YOU HAVE NOT FINISHED YOUR MEAL.

Mark said nothing. Instead he got up and walked over to the wall SCP-001 had written on. He grabbed his sleeve in one hand, rubbed the message off, and returned to his seat.


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mark Fischbach (AKA YouTube's Markiplier) doesn't have the strongest faith in his intelligence. So when he is dropped into the middle of a Facility during a serious containment breach and told to escape using his wits, he believes he's in serious trouble.

Mark took all the objects out of his pockets and laid them all out on the desk. _Okay, well, if I'm going to find a way out I need to be prepared to try and get past Nine-Tailed Fox._ He looked at the range of objects: the saxophone duck, two SCP-500 pills, the hand-mirror, the moisturiser, the walkie-talkie, his dead cell phone and the sat nav. He added a pen and notebook from the director's desk and fetched the two joints and radio from the shelving unit to his left. Finally he sat down and took his first bite of sandwich, eyes scanning over the objects.

It just looked like a pile of junk. _How the fuck am I supposed to use any of this?_ He tried to pull his mind together, to focus. He looked between pairs of objects, willing himself to come up with a way to make them work together: the joints and the pills... nothing. The sax duck and the walkie-talkie... Well, the duck made noises which he could broadcast. But how was that supposed to be any use? Mark determinedly looked for another pairing. The... radio, and, the... duck, again..?

He threw the sandwich down. "Shit! Fuck!" he growled, and massaged his temples. "I don't know what to do with this crap!" He covered his face and gritted his teeth, trying not to swipe the desk clear with frustration. Eventually he got himself under control and took a deep breath. "Okay Mark, focus. Focus."

Maybe pairing things up wasn't the best way to go about this. The pills might come in useful if he got shot, assuming he could hide for long enough afterwards and if the gunshot didn't kill him first. The walkie-talkie would tell him where the members of the unit were.

_Okay, good. What else?_

Then Mark seemed to get onto a roll. The mirror could let him see around corners - which would be useful if he had to check for Mobile Task Force members. But the idea wasn't foolproof. He could use it but he would have to be careful not to be seen.

The moisturiser might come in useful as a lubricant. Perhaps it would make it easier to remove a grille that Billy hadn't pushed out? He doubted it was slippery enough, and a quick check confirmed that. He put it to one side and focused on the other items.

The pen and paper. He chewed on a mouthful of sandwich and wondered about the fact that in a way, writing materials were the cause of his problem. Mark had written before, a little. If only he could write his own-

-story! Throwing his sandwich to one side again he practically pounced on the notepad and wrote:

**'A door opened up next to Mark Edward Fischbach that he could walk through to get safely back to his home.'**

Nothing happened. No door, nothing. Maybe it had to be written by SCP-001 itself. Mark thought for a minute about how to get it to write his story.

NO.  
JUST NO.

Mark thought a moment longer, then looked at his water bottle and the pile of dust on the floor that he'd brushed away from Zero's last words. He got up from his seat and gathered the dust into the palm of one hand. He poured a little of the water into it and mixed it into a thin paste. Then he used one finger to write his story on the wall.

SCP-001 resisted, pulling his writing away and incorporating it into its own words.

Mark resisted back, smearing Zero's words with his finger to use for his short story.

N'T WORK  
DON'T BE SIL

"Stop doing that! I'm trying to get out!"

Zero kept fighting Mark's efforts, and Mark kept writing until he'd run out of paste. Nothing happened. Finally he thumped the wall. "Oh, come on! What the hell?"

I AM THE SCP.  
NOT YOU.  
USE YOUR AUTONOMY.

"Fine," he grated and returned to his seat, fuming. It took him a moment to relax to the point where he could think again.

He picked up the duck and looked at it. It was an SCP. _Could I use some of these items to pretend I'm an SCP and make them spare me?_ He glanced at the remaining array of objects. How he was going to make a convincing disguise out of these bits was beyond him. Mark sighed and picked up the sandwich in his other hand and resumed eating, although he felt even less hungry than before. He had to keep trying, there was no option to rage-quit this time.

The duck was unusual in being free-roaming. Most of the monsters at the Facility didn't get to do that. Just the ducks. _And the teddy bear!_ he remembered with a spark of hope.

The teddy bear had seemed harmless at first, even benevolent. But then something had happened that nobody at the Foundation understood, and the bear had spawned dangerous copies of itself. The Facility staff had been unable to track down the original bear since, but it was around here somewhere.

 _Why don't they lock you up, duck?_ The staff didn't know if it could be dangerous, like they hadn't known with the bear. Maybe it could change its behaviour and become equally dangerous. There didn't seem any way to be sure it couldn't. Mark took another bite - he was trying to take small ones - and scanned the other objects for a way to make the duck appear dangerous. If he could convince them, he could make them work on containing it and slip out behind them while they were distracted.

 _All of them, Mark?_ What guarantee did he have that they'd all devote their attention to this one problem? How dangerous would it have to look to distract the whole team?

And then he had it! Nine-tailed Fox might have been a team but they were still finite in number. Nine, in fact, hence their name. How many soldiers would work on containing each SCP? Two? Three? If he assumed they worked in pairs (it seemed the most sensible option to him) then, if he could find five SCPs for them to distract, he could slip by unnoticed!

He took a sip of water, started on the second half of the sandwich and thought about candidates. Billy - he could lure the statue to them. He could... He paused as he realised what he was thinking, but he could release Larry. That was two.

Was there some way he could track the bear down? He'd seen it once at the edge of the Light Containment Zone in the game. Before it had gone bad it was reputed to have drawn a picture for a staff member. Perhaps if he went there and sat with the notebook and pen drawing pictures for a while, the bear would come and join in. 

_And maybe that would be total fucking suicide. Focusing on a page when there's that much danger around? Think again, Mark._

While he was thinking of SCPs... what _had_ they done with Cassy? Had they put her back in her box room? He'd already helped her out by listening to her troubles and taking her for a walk. He'd wondered how meeting her was meant to be helpful to the story. Could he call in a favour with her? Ask her to act dangerous? Perhaps act as if the duck was dangerous to her? He scrapped the idea: he didn't want to put her in danger or make her life any worse than it already was.

But maybe she'd think of some other way, if he asked...

If so, that was three SCPs and six of the MTF held up.

What if he pretended the sax duck had induced some kind of memetic effects in him? Perhaps the key wasn't to avoid being seen but just to avoid them shooting him. If they saw him lying on the floor next to the duck and holding his head and saying it was showing him weird visions...

 _There's too high a chance that they'll shoot first and ask questions later. They're busy today, they've got to secure the whole Facility._ He filed the idea away in case it just needed to be tweaked.

Mark had been putting off eating the last bit of his sandwich for a minute. "Zero," he said, "I'm on to something but I need more time. Can I get another five minutes?"

NO, MARKIPLIER.  
WE HAD AN AGREEMENT. IT HAS BEEN FULFILLED.

His rage surged and then ebbed, and somehow he managed not to freak out. "I don't have military training," he explained as patiently as he could. "I need to plan against these guys. I can't just rush in and hope for the best."

I HAVE ALREADY ANSWERED YOU. MOVE ON.

"Even Five Nights at Freddy's gave me a break after ten minutes! What the fuck is this?!"

THIS IS RATIONALFIC AND YOU ARE PROBLEM-SOLVING UNDER SEVERAL CONSTRAINTS, INCLUDING YOUR EXPERTISE AND TIME.

Although Mark was fighting it, he could feel his stress levels rising again. "Yeah, I'd kind of noticed. Well," he continued, mocking Zero by pretending to be happy-go-lucky about the whole situation, "I guess I'd better go and give it my best shot." He ate the final piece, trying to ignore the fact that he was shaking with anger, and collected his items - including the lunch bag and water bottle, which he pressed half-flat so that it fit in his pocket, Wondering if he wasn't making a terrible mistake, he headed in Larry's direction to release him first.

"A lot of this relies on luck, you know. I don't like luck."

INDEED.  
NEITHER DO RATIONALFIC WRITERS.  
OVER-RELIANCE ON LUCK MAKES FOR BAD STORYTELLING.

"Is that your way of telling me not to do this?" Mark snapped. "Well, too bad - I don't have any other plan! Like I just said, I'm going to go call on Larry because right now that's the best I've got, and if you don't like it, go to hell and die!"

Zero said nothing and Mark stormed off.

xXx

Wade found himself speeding along in the back of an unmarked car with tinted windows, and more agitated than he'd ever been in his life. The guards sat to either side of him and the mysterious grey-haired man sat opposite him. They all waited in uncomfortable silence, although Wade suspected it was the most uncomfortable for him. 

"Were you responsible for the police dropping the search?" he asked, more to break the silence than because he expected a satisfying answer.

The man simply gave him a look that Wade had learned meant, _I'm not telling you yet. That's classified._

He thought of another question as they travelled. He half-expected to be told that the answer was classified, but once he'd thought of it he couldn't let it go. "These are casual clothes," he said hesitantly, tugging on the strap of the backpack. "They'll be a bit too long in the leg for Mark. You said you wanted a change of clothes for him. Did you mean casual or... formal?" He didn't really mean formal _per se._ What he really meant to ask was, 'Are these meant for my friend's funeral?' but he couldn't quite bear to ask.

"Casual will be fine," answered the man with characteristic candidness, and then sat back as if to imply that the conversation was over.

Wade nodded as he accepted that he wasn't going to get any more of an answer than that.

By the time the car stopped, Wade had absolutely no idea where he was, except that there were high wire fences and armed guards all around.

xXx

Mark soon reached the familiar pale-grey drabness of Larry's room but hesitated over what to do next. Larry's last victim had been Shy Guy after all, and there was no telling whether Larry would, or even could, kill it. If he hadn't, Shy Guy might be facing the monitor. He switched on the audio instead in case the sound could offer him any clues.

The first surprise was that Shy Guy was buzzing and screaming. _You're alive?_ The second was that its screams sounded different from the usual, somehow. Not quite desperate, not quite hesitant, but maybe a mix of both. And Mark could hear footsteps - the slap of bare feet landing heavily, inside the box. Shy Guy's, he assumed.

He fished the brown bag out of his pocket, flattened it out and pressed it against the monitor, and then turned on the visual feed. Carefully, very carefully, he peeled a corner of it away, ready to put it back instantly if he thought he might see Shy Guy's face.

A mystifying scene was revealed. Shy Guy stood in the middle of the room, both legs intact as far as Mark could see, and free of the femur breaker. It turned and ran a step, then bellowed and stepped another way. Its arms flailed and it seemed not to know which way it wanted to go. But Mark was as sure as he could be that it was in chase mode.

 _Who else could it be chasing but Larry?_ Mark wondered. He tried peeling other corners of the bag back to find the predator-corpse but could see nothing. He switched off the visual feed and leaned against the desk to think.

If Shy Guy was intent on chasing Larry and Larry had escaped, then Shy Guy would have broken through the cell wall. That meant that Larry was probably still inside. Had Shy Guy eaten him, or... whatever else it did to its victims? Had Shy Guy failed to digest the corpse, or something like that? Or had it killed Larry but still felt the need to hunt him because Larry had been dead to begin with?

 _Or..._ with a flash of insight Mark realised what had happened. Larry had come to eat the screaming Shy Guy, been locked into the cell, seen its face and had kept himself from getting killed ever since. Larry was hiding in his pocket dimension!

No wonder Shy Guy was confused about where to go!

Well, that was all a great theory, but if Larry was too scared to make an appearance it left Mark one SCP short, and Shy Guy was clearly in no state to safely stand in. As if there was such a thing as safety in Mark's plan. 

Mark looked again at the lunch bag. Then he switched off the visual feed and electromagnets, and walked down to Larry's cube, his hands and feet tingling with stress.


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mark Fischbach (AKA YouTube's Markiplier) doesn't have the strongest faith in his intelligence. So when he is dropped into the middle of a Facility during a serious containment breach and told to escape using his wits, he believes he's in serious trouble.

Mark rested his back against the outside of Larry's box and steadied his nerves as best he could. Nothing, from his scalp to his feet, felt steady. He tried to calm himself by breathing slowly, by gazing at the pale grey of the wall ahead, but it didn't help very much. He tried talking himself down from his budding panic: _I've done this before. Really, it's not that big of a deal._ Except, that wasn't true, was it? Last time, Shy Guy hadn't been in rampage mode, desperate to tear apart the poor creature that had seen its face. And last time, Mark hadn't been at the end of his string with exhaustion and simmering anger.

He looked at the door at the far end of the gangway, the first of several that he would have to go through. He chewed the inside of his lip in thought, and took his lanyard off. With some difficulty he tied it around his bicep so that the Omnicard dangled.

There was no more time to hesitate. Mark shut his eyes as he entered the containment box and spread his arms. He tracked Shy Guy's gurgled screams and walked up to it.

Then, with a roar he rugby-tackled it to the floor. They collapsed together and he felt its too-cold flesh again, its thin skin, its protruding bones. He pinned it between the shoulder blades with his knee and felt for its head. It struggled but without any focus on him, and Mark felt grimly pleased about that. Panting with terror, he pulled the bag out of his pocket and put it over Shy Guy's head. Then he wrestled it to its feet and gripped its forearms just like he had before. With all this done, he stood still for a moment.

Shy Guy screamed and pulled at his grip, still unfocused as if it didn't really understand that he was there. Mark ignored its smell, a mixture of fetid breath and dead skin, opened his eyes to look at its lower back, and steered it out of the box.

He was two rooms away by the time his mind properly caught up with him, and when it caught up it screamed, _What the frikkin' hell are you doing, Markiplier? This is bad!_ Mark noticed then that his hands were tingling with fear even as he gritted his teeth with determination. But this was his plan and he was going through with it, however nasty and however dangerous it was. _This is it,_ he thought grimly, ignoring his own sense of horror at what he was doing. _I'm going to get out of here!_

"Come on Shy Guy," he said, his breath heavy from stress and exertion. "We can do this."

Shy Guy's flailing made it much harder to hold and Mark would've been lying to himself if he'd said he was over his feelings of disgust about touching the SCP, but he didn't particularly care any more - the way out was so close! The monster was screaming and that didn't help either Mark's blood pressure or his stealth, but he wasn't in a position to do anything about that. He held out his arm and dangled the Omnicard in front of yet another door lock until it opened, and wrestled the SCP onwards.

Mark pushed Shy Guy through into the next room and looked beyond the monster's waist to scan the area. Then his breath caught in his throat: the first things he saw were two members of the Mobile Task Force. They faced him, guns at the ready. 

A grate lay on the floor to his right - clearly Billy had been this way at some point. Mark belatedly realised that there'd been a safer escape plan all along. He groaned a little and rolled his eyes up to the ceiling. _Damnit! Why didn't I just go in the ducts?_ He all but rested his forehead against Shy Guy's back with dismay. _Zero was wrong. I can't think. I'm stupid._

He could hardly switch to a new plan now. Even if he pushed Shy Guy at them he'd never get to the duct before they shot him - and surely there was no doubt they would.

No, his only option now was to go through with his original idea. He kicked the back of Shy Guy's knee and the creature collapsed, still wailing. As it tried to lever itself back to its feet he locked his arm around its neck and grabbed the base of the upside-down bag. "Stay back!" he shouted to the men. "Put down your guns and step away. Let me through or I'll show you his face!"

Mark's confidence in his plan shrivelled to nothing as he saw that neither of the men made any move to put down their weapons. Instead one pulled a steel canister out of his uniform, twisted the top and threw it down between the two parties. Mark watched it dumbly as it clanked on the tiles, rolled and came to a stop. Then he looked back at the soldier who'd thrown it as he lifted his walkie-talkie to his mouth. "I've got a D-class here threatening us with a blindfolded SCP-096. Smoke bomb deployed. Requesting backup ASAP."

 _Smoke bomb,_ echoed Mark's mind, watching the canister as it started to spew smoke in a rapidly-growing grey cloud. In a matter of seconds his weapon would be useless - if he was going to unleash it any time it had to be now. He pulled off Shy Guy's paper bag, put his hands on its back and launched it at them.

The men flinched and levelled their guns at it. Whether their faces registered fear, Mark would never know, for they wore masks.

Shy Guy kept screaming and flailing, turning around in its fruitless search for Radical Larry. It totally ignored the soldiers.

"Oh, _come on!_ " growled Mark. "How is this not working?"

In a horrible moment it turned back towards Mark and he saw its face, its over-sized jaw hanging open and its eyes full of blind pain and rage.

"Oh crap oh _crap oh crap!_ " he motor-mouthed and backed up, frantically thinking ahead of where to go to run from it.

It turned away to keep not-chasing Larry as if it hadn't seen Mark at all. 

Within a second Mark noticed this - and wondered if he _was_ an SCP after all. But if that was true, and if he was immune from SCP-096's targetting due to some special power, then the marines shouldn't have been. But they had seen it too and it hadn't turned to hunt them.

In the next fraction of a second his brain caught up with the real danger of the situation - the marines themselves - and he flattened himself with a thud against the floor where they couldn't see him for the smoke. Gunshots fired over his head.

One soldier spoke to the other, his tone less formal than when he'd been talking over the walkie-talkie, but Mark didn't catch what he said. He was too busy making for the duct. He found it and, under the cover of the smoke, climbed in and kept crawling until he left the trailing smoke behind, until he found a corner to hide around. _They can't shoot me around a corner._

Safe for just a moment, Mark sat to give himself a minute to calm down. He leaned his back against the duct wall and braced his feet against the wall opposite to rest, and his heart rate began to settle. As his panic sank, it revealed a mountain of anger. "Well, that fell apart spectacularly, don't you think?" he whispered angrily at the wall.

Zero's answer glowed slightly so that he could read it.

IT DID INDEED.

"Why didn't it attack? Did you change the rules?"

THE RULES ARE FLEXIBLE WITH THE ISSUE OF SCP-096 ATTACKING.

Mark spluttered at this. "How'd you work that one out?" he asked through gritted teeth, furious yet mindful of the need to stay quiet. He wasn't in the mood to think his words and let SCP-001 read his mind.

CURRENTLY, SCP-096 ALREADY HAS A TARGET: SCP-106.  
THERE IS NO OFFICIAL INDICATION OF WHETHER SCP-096 MUST CATCH ITS INITIAL TARGET BEFORE MOVING ONTO THE NEXT OR WHETHER IT CAN PRIORITISE A SECONDARY TARGET, PERHAPS BECAUSE THEY ARE MORE REACHABLE.  
I ASSIGNED THE FORMER RULE TO SCP-096.

"To screw me over," Mark finished for Zero and stared at the last set of words as if to challenge the SCP to tell him he was wrong.

NO. NOT TO SCREW YOU OVER.  
YOUR PLAN WOULD NOT HAVE WORKED.  
I DID YOU A FAVOUR.

"Why wouldn't it have worked?" he asked, his tone defiant but at the same time, genuinely wondering.

THE REST OF THE MOBILE TASK FORCE WERE ON THEIR WAY.  
ALL THEY NEEDED WERE THREE TEAM MEMBERS TO SURROUND YOU WELL ENOUGH TO SHOOT YOU IN THE BACK.

So Zero was right after all. Again. Mark didn't so much relax at this realisation than sag. He sighed and let his head rest against the wall at his back. "I saw its face," he said.

YES, YOU DID.

"Soon as Radical Larry slips up, I'm dead."

THAT MAY OR MAY NOT BE TRUE.

Mark didn't have the motivation to bother asking what Zero meant, but watched the wall and resignedly waited for it to say more.

LARRY HAS A UNIQUE HIDING PLACE.  
HE WILL KEEP HIMSELF SAFE.

"What if he doesn't? What about when he needs to eat?"

I AM UNCERTAIN THAT HE NEEDS TO EAT AT ALL.  
BUT LARRY IS WILY AND CAN LOOK AFTER HIMSELF...  
AT LEAST FOR LONG ENOUGH FOR YOU TO ESCAPE THE STORY.

"I'm starting to wonder if I will," said Mark, his forearms resting on his knees. The truth was, he felt ragged, both inside and out. He could feel his muscles twitching with anxiety at every little sound. He seemed to be looking everywhere at once, looking for all potential avenues of attack. He was damp from sweating so much and... and he felt like his mind had been pushed somewhere it should never have had to go. What he wanted was to escape, and get someplace he felt safe, and sleep. Sleep would be good, so long as none of today's events came out in nightmares.

YOU ARE CLOSE TO THE EXIT.  
WHEN YOU GET THERE YOU WILL BE OUT OF THIS.

"It'll still chase me. Wherever I go." He looked at his hands and scratched a bead of dried blood off his knuckle. Deep down he knew he should care but instead all he felt was sick resignation. Maybe he'd feel something in five minutes' time but in that moment he couldn't feel very much about it at all. "That's what it does."

NO, IT WON'T.

Mark read this and wondered if he could dare to feel hopeful. He watched the wall for more information.

YOU WILL PULL THE SAME TRICK AS LARRY.  
YOU DO NOT BELONG TO THIS LAYER OF REALITY.  
AFTER YOU GET THROUGH THE GATE, YOU WILL BE FREE.

Mark basked in this for a moment, but then the warm feeling didn't seem to fit any more. "Why are you being reassuring?"

SCP-001 took a while to answer.

"And that's another thing," he said. "What's going on when you take a while to answer me? You feeling like you've done something wrong?"

ALL WILL BECOME CLEAR SOON.  
AND I LOOK FORWARD TO SHARING THE TRUTH WITH YOU, MARK.  
BUT FOR NOW, YOU MUST STILL FOCUS.

Mark found himself struggling with this. On the one hand he sorely hated the SCP for what it had done to him and for what it might still do. On the other... the journey had been lonely, and here it was, offering encouragement when he needed it most.

He rubbed at his eyes. "I'm not sure what to make of you," he admitted. He was about to ask what to do next, but then he remembered his earlier plan. If the ducts really offered a potential way out, he was already in the ideal place. "I'm going to keep going," he muttered, got onto his hands and knees and crawled further along. 

MARK.

He ignored the glowing scrawl of his name as he crawled along.

MARK.

He stopped and listened carefully. The voices of the Mobile Task Force were distant but he could hear two groups of them communicating. _Maybe about me. They know I'm on the loose. I guess I'd better work fast._

MARK.

"What?" he asked irritably.

KEEP YOUR CHIN UP.  
YOU'RE ALMOST THERE.  
AND DON'T FORGET TO KEEP THINKING.

Mark smiled but couldn't quite bring himself to say thank you.

He turned one more corner - and began to single-blink. "Hi Billy," he murmured, probably not loud enough for the statue to hear even if it _could_ hear. Mark felt afraid, but there was a routine feeling about the fear that rendered the emotion flat: he was too used to it. He crawled up to Billy to check the duct beyond it for sounds. The Task Force sounded distant, and their voices echoed down the duct from somewhere far-off.

 _I need to get past Billy. I'll find a way to do that. And I need a map._ He looked at the wall and waited for a map to appear. 

WHAT FOR?

 _You know what for,_ he answered doggedly. _I'm going to have to work backwards until I can get past Billy and I can't figure out the layout of the Facility from inside the ducts. Can I get a map to show me where to go? Or directions, or... something?_

YOU CAN DO THIS WITHOUT A MAP.

 _You've gone right back into asshole mode,_ he commented, and sat down on his feet to think.

Without a map he wouldn't know which way he was going. There weren't many vents allowing him a look out and orient himself and even if there were, he now had Billy following him. He couldn't afford to take his eyes off Billy to look. 

He stayed put for several minutes, trying to figure out ways of blocking Billy and figuring out his position relative to Gate A, single-blinking all the while and never quite able to concentrate on his problem-solving because of it. After those few minutes he was no closer to figuring out a solution than when he'd started. 

I APOLOGISE.  
I'VE WRITTEN YOU INTO A CORNER.  
I THINK YOU NEED MY ASSISTANCE.

"Or directions, or a map," he pointed out. "Directions would be good."

YOU'RE TRYING TO WORK OUT WHERE GATE A IS FROM THE DUCTS.

"Yep." He single-blinked again. "And?"

AND YOU CAN'T BECAUSE YOU DON'T KNOW WHERE YOU ARE UNTIL YOU LEAVE THE DUCTS.

"I know all this."

YOU'RE TRYING TO SOLVE THREE PROBLEMS AT A TIME.  
BREAK IT DOWN.

Mark took a deep breath and took the advice. "I need to get past Billy," he said, "but I also need to get past Nine Tailed Fox. Then get to the exit, but I've got to inside the ducts for as much of the journey as I can just in case the Task Force catch up to me. Is that what you mean?"

THAT IS CORRECT.  
NOW, HOW WILL YOU RESOLVE THESE?

"You're pissing me off," answered Mark as neutrally as he could, and thought some more.


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mark Fischbach (AKA YouTube's Markiplier) doesn't have the strongest faith in his intelligence. So when he is dropped into the middle of a Facility during a serious containment breach and told to escape using his wits, he believes he's in serious trouble.

Mark crawled backwards, slowly and deliberately, luring Billy along, and as he did he listened for the Mobile Task Force. It was true that he had next to no idea where he was going but for the moment that didn't matter: he didn't need the exit, at least not yet; he needed to find the marines.

Billy remained in front of him all the way, its jaws always open, its eyes always glistening, but never moving. He never saw it move, of course, but every time he blinked to let it move towards him it reappeared closer, its stubby little arms in different positions.

As he crawled and listened and single-blinked Mark also watched, flicking his gaze up in search of a vertical shaft in the duct system and always, always keeping Billy in his peripheral vision. He silently thanked his good fortune that he was such a good multi-tasker. Years of playing games and simultaneously commentating on them had honed him. His head hurt from keeping up such tight concentration but he wasn't going to let up. No way.

Mark inched past one shaft. He stopped to kneel and reach up into it. All four walls were flush. He cursed almost silently and crouched back down again to assess Billy's position.

If he blinked, Billy would come too far forward. He could hear the MTF somewhere nearby but that was no use to him. Not this time. He ventured further backwards and around a corner. The footsteps and buzzing of the MTF faded as he went.

It wasn't long before he found another one. As soon as he knew it was there he stopped and assessed Billy's position again. If he blinked three times then hopefully it would end up just beneath the shaft.

And then he heard what he needed to hear: walkie-talkie white-noise and buzzy voices.

 _Okay Billy,_ he thought. _Time to work as a team._

He blinked twice, backed away to a safe distance, held his breath for good luck and blinked one more time.

It looked to him like Billy was exactly where he needed him. He sat down, rolled up his overall legs and pulled his arms out of his sleeves to expose his back, then crawled forward and unfolded himself until he was standing full-height next to Billy in the vertical shaft. He took the hand-mirror out of his pocket and, as calmly as he could, he used Billy's back and head as a stepladder.

Mark had to keep his eyes on Billy the whole time but he also had to look up - and that was where the mirror came in. The task of holding the mirror up so that he could see Billy while the same time looking up into the duct made climbing difficult, but inch by inch, he managed it. He braced his free hand and feet and back against the walls, creating as much friction as he could to hold himself up. His bare skin, clammy with sweat, caught against the cold sheet metal - and held. He laughed softly to himself, then inched upwards until he felt certain he was out of Billy's reach. _Well, those pole-dancing lessons have just paid for themselves,_ he thought and snapped the mirror shut, finally breaking his line of vision to Billy.

He got a waft of Billy's blood-and-faeces smell as it stood up in the shaft to try and reach him, but it couldn't - he'd made damn sure of that.

"Go on Billy," he whispered, half to himself, as he kept himself braced in the duct and looked up at the horizontal vent for the floor above. "There's a whole lot of marines for you outside. Go get 'em."

Billy must have given up on him because in an instant its presence was gone. Mark heard it clambering its way through the duct in the direction of the MTF and gradually, he dared to relax. Mark let himself back down and followed in the direction Billy had gone.

Soon he reached a fork in the duct and stopped. He pulled his sleeves and overall legs back down as he listened for the sounds coming from each, warily curious about which to go down.

There seemed to be soldiers in both of the rooms the two ducts led to: he could hear them talking. Or not quite their words, but they were definitely having a discussion about something. And then one duct fell silent and the other sounded with more footsteps, more voices.

Mark didn't quite dare to celebrate, but it sounded like they'd all gathered in the one room. And then he heard the one piece of evidence to seal the deal:

"Blinking."

Mark sighed with relief and looked down the duct, smiling. _Thank you Billy. Keep 'em busy for me!_ And with that he crawled down the silent duct, square sections of dark, dull metal inching by with each step. He felt optimistic, though, his heart thundering, but not with anxiety this time. It was with pure, desperate hope.

He emerged into an empty room lit with red lights and headed for a doorway that felt like the right way to go. He tried to keep his breathing and footsteps quiet and listened for any members of the MTF, any SCPs. He didn't hear any.

 _Have I done it?_ he asked hopefully, glancing at the wall as he almost-ran.

GO ON! GO ON!

 _I don't know the way,_ he complained, although the uncertainty didn't slow him down one bit. Somewhere in his heart, he knew the truth.

THE WAY OUT DOESN'T MATTER.  
I'M ARRANGING THE ROOMS TO LET YOU THROUGH.  
GO! GO!

 _You got the story you wanted, huh?_ he asked, but the bitterness he felt was washed over with euphoria and half a dose of panic.

YES! YES, IT'S PERFECT!  
NEXT ROOM - YOU'RE ALMOST THERE!

Mark broke into a run as he saw the doorway, and bolted for the elevator that would get him outdoors. He hit the key device and swung inside, batting the Close button in an instant. The door closed and he almost collapsed with relief.

The wait to get up to the next level was too long - not long enough for a conversation with SCP-001, barely even long enough for Mark to run his hands through his hair and adjust his glasses, but long enough to test his patience nonetheless. "I've done it!" he muttered to himself, on the verge of mania.

The door opened and he cried out at the sudden sight of daylight. Natural daylight, that he'd barely noticed he'd missed until now! "Oh Jesus," he said in delirium. "Oh God. I swear I'm going to get up before dawn every day for the rest of my life and watch the sunrise! I'm going to call everybody I know and tell them I love them, I'm going to talk to my fans, I'm going to-"

Mark heard a mechanical click. He turned his head to see where the sound had come from and stopped in his tracks, horrified all over again. A few paces away from him stood an armed soldier. The soldier had his gun trained on Mark but was looking at the floor. Or rather, a message written on the floor, written by SCP-001.

For the first time Mark saw its writing upside-down - clearly it was a message meant only for the soldier. Mark tried to crane his neck to see what it said.

"Don't you bloody move!"

Mark stopped trying and stood very still.

The soldier lowered his gun and picked up his walkie-talkie, and Mark breathed a tentative sigh of relief. "Reporting discovery of SCP-001. Request instructions for containment."

As he spoke, SCP-001 morphed the writing. It looked like candle wax melting down, but then Mark figured that it was turning the text, letter by letter, so that he could read it.

I SAID:  
ONCE UPON A TIME, A CONTAINMENT BREACH OCCURRED AT THE SCP FOUNDATION FACILITY. A SOLDIER NAMED PETER ROSS WAS ON DUTY TO HELP WITH THE RECONTAINMENT BUT HE WAS UNABLE TO SHOOT ANYTHING BECAUSE HIS GUN LOCKED UP EVERY TIME.

Mark read this and felt his arms and legs grow heavy. He tensed to keep himself standing. _You just saved my life?_

YES.

The soldier - Peter - pointed his gun well to Mark's left and tried to fire a shot. The shot didn't come: it sounded to Mark like the mechanism had seized up somehow.

The man on the other end answered. "We don't have an SCP-001."

Peter spoke, watching Mark intently for any movement. "It calls itself SCP-001 and it's demonstrated memetic effects. Request that this be escalated to the director."

"On whose authority, soldier?"

"At the SCP's request, sir."

The respondent paused. "The director is being contacted now. Stay with SCP-001 until otherwise instructed."

"Roger that. Also have a D-class in sight. SCP-001 protected him from getting shot."

"Shoot him dead."

The coldness of the instruction chilled Mark to the bone.

"I can't, sir."

"Why not?"

"SCP-001 made my gun malfunction."

"That's how it protected him?"

"Yes, sir."

The line went silent for a moment and Mark guessed the man was deciding what else to do, given that normal protocol clearly couldn't be followed. "Watch him, then."

"Yes, sir."

Mark's heart was beating out of his chest but he did his best to breathe normally and calm down. So this was it.

He looked up and around at the daylight again. "Did you think I was an SCP?" he tentatively asked, aware of the way this part of the game normally worked. According to the game, the control centre had watched him during his escape and thought his luck bordered on extraordinary. Which meant, worthy of being SCP-classified.

Peter stood half at ease as he answered Mark. "No. Should we?"

Mark was well-enough versed in SCP-001's tricks that he was already thinking about this, trying to work out what was wrong with this picture. "I thought you might have been watching me."

"Power's down. Be surprised if the security cameras are working, mate."

The two men looked uneasily at each other but both seemed to understand that that part of the conversation was over.

"You've quite the friend, there," commented Peter, waving the nozzle of his gun across SCP-001's most recent words.

Mark made a doubtful noise but didn't explicitly disagree.

A door opened, and Mark and Peter looked over to see three men approach. Two were soldiers, each flanking a man with broad shoulders, greying hair, and greyer eyes. He looked down at the writing on the floor, expression austere and intent.

"Is this SCP-001?" he asked, plainly keen to take control of the situation.

Mark nodded and watched the words morph once again.

YES SIR.

The man grunted at the answer. "You," he told Peter, "Go to the medical bay, request an amnesiac, no explanations why." He turned to Mark, "You. And you," he glanced at the writing. "Follow me."

Mark fell into step beside the guy. "You're the director, right?"

"Yes sir, I am," answered the director without looking at him, his stride fast.

"Where are we going?" the gamer pressed, overwhelmingly aware that he should do exactly as the director said, nothing more and definitely nothing less. To do anything else seemed a very bad idea indeed. He looked around for evidence that Zero was coming with them but couldn't see anything. Vaguely unnerved at the hint of dissent, he looked forward to see where they were headed, only to see Zero's writing beside the door the director had come through:

DON'T WORRY, MARK.  
I'M EVERYWHERE, SO IN ESSENCE YES, I'M COMING WITH YOU.

"SCP-001," the director said in clipped tones, "I'd like to request your silence until otherwise instructed."

Zero dissolved its last words and said nothing more. Which Mark thought made sense.

They passed through the doorway. At first Mark almost balked at the idea of going back indoors after everything he'd been through, but then he saw how different it all looked. Plastered, duck-egg blue walls instead of rough off-white and concrete. Carpet instead of ceramic tiles. Art, plants, lights. He couldn't bring himself to relax but he knew he wasn't being led back to where he'd started, and that counted for a heck of a lot.

The director opened the door to a room and held out an arm to indicate to Mark that he should go in.

Mark looked inside first. It was a medical bay.

"Stay here," the director told him. "I'll be back in five minutes. Don't try to leave, my soldiers will wait outside and are instructed to shoot in any case of disobedience."

Mark didn't mention that he expected the soldiers' guns to fail if they tried. "Yes, sir," he said instead.

The director shut the door on him and he looked around, finally at what seemed like the end of his journey. "What do I do now?" he asked Zero.

It didn't answer him.

"You following instructions too, huh? I don't blame you." He paused, listening to his bodily rhythms, the pulse in his temples, the old adrenaline burning out in his blood, the twitch in his muscles, and wondered if he was going to have to put himself through anything else. This moment, and this place, had a sense of finality about it but he wasn't quite sure he trusted it. "Am I safe here?" he continued quietly so that the guards didn't hear. "Because I'm aware I can try to escape. You can stop their guns from working, right?"

OH, MARK.  
YES - YOU ARE SAFE.  
NO - THERE IS NO NEED TO ESCAPE NOW.  
YOU HAVE DONE THE WORK.  
ALL WILL BE WELL SOON.  
THE STORY ENDS IN THIS ROOM.  


He stared at the words, frozen with fear at the idea of the story ending.

SCP-001 reassured him:

IT ENDS IN YOUR FAVOUR.  
YOU WON.

Mark relaxed a little. "Right." He passed the time by looking around. A gurney was pushed up against the back wall. A canvas screen blocked his view from... nothing, it turned out when he checked, just an empty portion of the room. Just space to do stuff in private. There were two cabinets, both locked, and a desk and chair. He almost went to it to look for useful things to take but then remembered he didn't need to any more. He sighed, rubbed his forehead, and sat on the edge of the gurney.

Once he sat, he realised it really _was_ all over and became crushingly aware of his exhaustion. "We did it," he said numbly, knowing that Zero would hear even if it chose not to speak. The SCP had its story, and he... he had done all he could to ensure his own safety.

Out in the corridor he heard footsteps approach.


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mark Fischbach (AKA YouTube's Markiplier) doesn't have the strongest faith in his intelligence. So when he is dropped into the middle of a Facility during a serious containment breach and told to escape using his wits, he believes he's in serious trouble.

Wade followed the guards to a door, the bag of spare clothes slung over his shoulder that he'd been instructed to bring. Two guards already stood at either side of the door, guns lowered but ready. One of 'his' guards used a key card to open it and ushered him in, and the pair left. And then Wade paid the guards no more attention because there, sitting on the edge of a gurney, was his friend Mark, safe and...

He stopped mid-stride and took in the sight. Mark looked distant, like he was thinking about some other place or time entirely. He wore an orange jumpsuit. The suit looked worn - almost moth-eaten. A spray of blood sprawled its way across Mark's chest and shins, dark brown with age. Mark's hands clung to the edge of the gurney, his knuckles white.

Mark's eyes flicked to Wade. The Hawaiian registered recognition and his expression brightened a little. "Wade. Hi," he said as he stood up, although he sounded so tired. Or not tired exactly; Wade suspected Mark was feeling something worse than just the need to rest.

Wade came forward with an offer of a hug which Mark accepted. "It's good to see you, man."

"Yeah," Mark answered, his voice quiet. Weary. But he returned the hug firm and true.

Wade held Mark at arm's length and appraised him. "I read the story. If you went through half of that stuff-"

"You were out there all the time?" Mark still looked tired, but searched Wade's eyes for his answer. Wade thought it was like looking at a lost child.

Wade nodded, frowning with concern. "You don't really believe you were put into a story, do you?"

Mark paused, and then shook his head slowly. "No. Did _you_ ever figure out what was happening?"

"I think I spoke to the same guy that led you here. Grey hair, big shoulders?" Mark nodded, and he continued. "He wouldn't tell me anything. Didn't confirm, didn't deny."

"I don't think he was the author," said Mark, almost talking over Wade as if he'd retreated into his own thoughts. Which, judging by the distracted look on Mark's face, he had. "I think it's someone else."

Wade watched his friend's expressions change as he thought whatever haunted thoughts were running through his mind. "What's happened to you, Mark?" he asked. "You weren't in a story. Not the way they said. You understand that, right?"

Mark seemed to snap to the present at Wade's gentle challenge. "Yeah. 'Course. They kept saying I was in a story so I had to say I believed it, just to keep them happy, you know? I think they were crazy." He added, talking to Wade but peering at the wall behind him.

Wade looked at the wall, half-expecting to see text on it. He didn't see any. "But you weren't," Wade repeated slowly and carefully.

"No, of course I wasn't." Mark muttered right before Wade lost him again to whatever place in his head he kept going to. Mark's eyes twitched as if he was watching some scene play out, and then he rubbed at his eyes as if he could physically pull the visions away.

The door opened and in walked the grey-haired man. He turned his attention to Wade and Mark. "Good afternoon again, Mr. Barnes, Mr. Fischbach. It's time I introduced myself: my name is Dr. Weller and I'm managing the SCP-001 case personally."

Mark watched Dr. Weller as he spoke, nodded as if to confirm his understanding and dropped his gaze back to the floor.

This really wasn't the Mark Wade knew. He'd been robbed of his love of life. Wade answered for him. "Did you catch the author?"

Wade noticed a movement on the opposite wall.

HE HAS NOT CAUGHT ME.  
BUT I AM READY TO BE CAUGHT, OR EVEN NEUTRALISED IF NEEDED.

The doctor saw Wade looking and turned his head. "So you decided to join this conversation."

YES, DIRECTOR.  
IT HAS ALWAYS MY INTENTION TO HAVE THIS DISCUSSION.

"Explain," said Dr. Weller with a curtness Wade hoped would never be directed at him. He could see how this man had earned his place in this Facility.

I AM A STORY-WRITER BY TRADE.  
I BEGAN TO FEEL CONCERNED SEVERAL WEEKS AGO THAT THOSE OF MY STORIES DESCRIBING  
REAL-WORLD OBJECTS, PEOPLE AND EVENTS AFFECTED THOSE THINGS.  


Wade glanced at Mark to see what he made of this. Mark was hunkered forward, watching the words intently.

I EXPERIMENTED BY WRITING SHORT FICTIONS IN WHICH MY KITCHEN CUPBOARD  
CONTAINED ITEMS I KNEW THEY DID NOT CONTAIN OR IN WHICH A PARTICULAR GARMENT I OWNED WAS  
A DIFFERENT COLOUR TO THE COLOUR I KNOW IT TO HAVE.  
REALITY ONCE AGAIN CHANGED TO MATCH MY STORIES.  


"Mm hmm," rumbled the doctor, his arms folded and with a not-so-vague air of disapproval.

THIS CONFIRMED TO ME THE NATURE OF MY AFFLICTION.  
I WROTE A STORY IN WHICH A NATURAL DISASTER THAT HAD ALREADY BEEN  
REPORTED ON IN THE NEWS DID NOT HAPPEN.  
WHEN I CHECKED A FEW HOURS LATER, ALL EVIDENCE THAT IT HAD HAPPENED HAD DISAPPEARED.  
IT APPEARS THAT I CAN CHANGE REALITY BY WRITING ABOUT IT.

Dr. Weller had visibly stiffened at the mention of SCP-001's final experiment. "Hold off from writing any more," he said, his tone demanding compliance.

DR. WELLER, I AM WRITING THIS VERY MEETING.  
I NEED TO IN ORDER TO MAKE IT HAPPEN BECAUSE  
I EXIST IN A LAYER OF REALITY ONE LEVEL UP FROM YOU.  


Wade looked around the room, although he wasn't sure what he expected to see that would indicate whether or not the writer was telling the truth.

I DON'T KNOW IF IT IS POSSIBLE FOR US TO MEET IN PERSON.  
I WROTE MARK'S EXPERIENCES AT THE FOUNDATION  
TO ATTRACT YOUR ATTENTION AND REQUEST YOUR HELP.

"Say more."

YES, SIR.  
PLEASE BE ASSURED THAT YOU, MARK AND WADE ARE ALL AUTONOMOUS IN THIS SCENE.  
YOU CAN ALL ACT AND SPEAK AS YOU SEE FIT.  
I AM NOT CONTROLLING YOU, ONLY CREATING A SITUATION IN WHICH  
YOU CAN ALL MEET, AND IN WHICH I CAN REQUEST YOUR HELP.

"So as I understand," said the director slowly, "you discovered that you were SCP-001. You wrote a story, then kidnapped Mr. Fischbach and put him into it, to get my attention. Ah, and I see: you allowed Mr. Fischbach and Mr. Barnes to communicate, to create a link between the two environments. Am I right so far?"

YES SIR,  
TO MAKE SURE WADE COULD RAISE THE ALARM.

"Hmm. Which Facility are we in, your native one or the one you created?"

"You're buying into this?" asked Wade incredulously.

" _Mr. Barnes,_ " Dr. Weller warned, and Wade promptly shut up. "SCP-001?"

I AMALGAMATED THEM.

"Why?" Somehow, the director managed to make this sound more like a warning than a profession of ignorance. "Why bother?"

I PANICKED.  
I AM SORRY.  
WHEN YOU CONTACTED WADE, PROVING THAT YOUR FACILITY EXISTED,  
I PUSHED THE FACILITY AND WADE INTO THE FICTIONAL WORLD.

This made Wade's head spin. "Then what happened to the rest of-" Then he saw Dr. Weller's glare and promptly shut up.

Dr. Weller looked at the wall again. "So you made a fictional world with my Facility in it. My Facility also existed in your world. When I contacted Mr. Barnes you pushed my real Facility into the story. Why?"

I TOLD YOU: I'M SCARED.  
I AM SORRY, I DO NOT KNOW IF I DID THE RIGHT THING.  
IF YOU EXIST IN MY WORLD, THAT MEANS ALL THE SCPS EXIST IN MY WORLD TOO.  
SO I PUSHED YOU AND EVERY SCP YOU HAVE EVER CAUGHT INTO THIS POCKET WORLD I MADE  
SO THAT THEY WERE CONTAINED.

"And you merged the two Facilities, rather than duplicating them?"

CORRECT.

"So your pocket world, as you call it, now contains my Facility, Mr. Fischbach, Mr. Barnes, and... is there anything else?"

NO.

Wade checked on Mark, who looked baffled, but at least he was present enough to be listening. Wade couldn't blame him for feeling confused about all this. He put a supportive hand on Mark's shoulder, and the half-Korean almost-smiled at him in response.

"I'm sure you can imagine my response to being falsely imprisoned," Dr. Weller told SCP-001.

I REPEAT: I AM SORRY.  
PLEASE HELP ME. WHAT SHOULD I DO NEXT?

Dr. Weller's demeanour didn't soften at this, but at least he relaxed a little. "Do nothing until I instruct you. Is that all the help you are looking for, or is there anything else?" he asked, his tone making it clear he would decide for himself whether or not he would deliver. Wade found himself wondering what the director really thought of all this, behind his admittedly impressive facade of control.

SCP-001 IS A PHENOMENON, NOT AN INDIVIDUAL.  
I AM CURRENTLY HOST TO THE 001 CONDITION AND I WANT IT GONE.  
DOCTOR, I BELIEVE I COULD DESTROY THE WORLD WITH THIS POWER IF I WROTE THE WRONG STORY.  


Wade coughed to get the SCP's attention. "So, um, don't write."

I REPEAT: SCP-001 IS A PHENOMENON, NOT AN INDIVIDUAL.  
I BELIEVE I COULD UNWITTINGLY PASS IT ON TO SOMEBODY ELSE.  


Wade felt annoyed at himself for not spotting this and nodded, finally realising what the writer meant. "Right."

I AM SCARED. I DON'T WANT THIS POWER. I WANT TO GET RID OF IT.  
HOWEVER, I DO NOT WANT TO PASS IT ON TO SOMEBODY WHO WILL USE THE POWER FOR EVIL  
OR USE IT IN IGNORANCE.  
DOCTOR, HELP ME AND I WILL COMPLY TO ISOLATE, AND/OR TRAP,  
001 IF IT IS POSSIBLE TO DO SO.

Wade looked at Mark to check how he was doing.

Mark watched the exchange but his eyes kept flicking to the door, as if he expected somebody to come in. Or perhaps some _thing._

"I'm glad we have your support," said Dr. Weller. "I'll liaise with you more thoroughly directly after this meeting."

THAT IS A BIG RELIEF. THANK YOU.

The director nodded his satisfaction and found a notepad with tear-off pages. "Mr. Barnes, which address are you taking Mr. Fischbach to?"

"Why?"

"I need to give you both an amnesiac, so my guards will be taking you home."

"Why do we need amnesiacs?"

"Because everything we're talking about here is highly classified."

Wade nodded, although he had reservations about being made to forget something this important. He spoke to the author. "You said you don't want to do any harm but you nearly killed Mark several times. How was that doing no harm?"

THAT IS TRUE. I OWE YOU AN APOLOGY, MARK.

Mark didn't seem to know how to react to that at first. Then he mumbled, "Yeah. Thanks."

I NEEDED TO GAIN THE ATTENTION OF THE FOUNDATION.  
I CHOSE TO DO THIS BY WRITING A STORY ABOUT IT.  


"I don't see any point in repeating yourself," warned Dr. Weller.

SORRY.  
IF IT HAD BEEN ONLY ABOUT THE SCP FOUNDATION I FEARED THE STORY WOULD HAVE  
DIED IN OBSCURITY SO I WROTE A CELEBRITY INTO IT FOR EXTRA PUBLICITY.  
YOU WERE THE IDEAL CHOICE.  
YOU ALREADY KNEW ABOUT THE FOUNDATION SO KNEW HOW TO ESCAPE IN RELATIVE SAFETY.

Mark looked unconvinced but said nothing.

YOU ARE FAMOUS ONLINE WITH A PARTICULAR EMPHASIS ON SOCIAL MEDIA.  
I FELT CONFIDENT YOUR FRIENDS WOULD DRAW ATTENTION TO  
YOUR SITUATION WHEN YOU WENT MISSING FROM THEIR LAYER OF REALITY,  
AND THEREFORE TO MY STORY, AND THEREFORE ENCOURAGE THE SCP FOUNDATION TO CONTACT ME.

"Hang on," said Wade, "What are these layers of reality, anyway?" The philosopher in him very much wanted to hear more.

"We need to keep this conversation on track," the director answered on the author's behalf. "I need to return you to your civilian lives without any memory of all this."

Wade opened his mouth to complain about missing out on such an unusual opportunity to talk to an effective god, saw the director's disapproving glare, and promptly shut up.

Dr. Weller approached a medicine cabinet and took a couple of small beakers and two bottles out of it. He began to shake the larger one and Wade heard a ball bearing rattle around inside it. "I'm going to prepare an amnesiac for each of you and arrange for you to be taken home. Did you bring Mr. Fischbach a change of clothes?"

"Yes," answered Wade and handed the bag to his friend. Mark accepted it wordlessly and shuffled around behind the fabric screen. Soon the only noises were the quiet clinking and glugging of Dr. Weller preparing amnesiacs and the rustle of clothing behind the screen.

With nothing else to do, Wade tried an experiment. Mark had been able to think and be telepathically read by the author. Could he, too? _You were very harsh to Mark. I think you went too far._

He read the author's answer in stunned silence. The director, distracted with his amnesiac cocktail, didn't see its response.

I APOLOGISE GREATLY FOR THAT.  
AS I STATED BEFORE, I WAS TERRIFIED OF CHANGING OR DAMAGING THE WORLD.  
I FELT THAT PUSHING MARK TO PROVIDE A GOOD STORY WOULD BE  
LESS DAMAGING THAN ACCIDENTALLY WRITING SOMETHING THAT COULD HARM OUR PLANET OR ITS POPULATION.  
TO HARM MARK MEANT DAMAGING ONE LIFE.

 _Don't you mean kill?_ asked Wade pointedly.

The author took a few seconds to reply. In that silence Wade watched the director put three drops from the smaller bottle into each drink using a pipette.

YES.  
TO WRITE SOMETHING THAT CONTRADICTED REAL-WORLD EVENTS COULD KILL ALL 7 BILLION OF US.  
I CHOSE TO RISK ONE LIFE OVER 7 BILLION.  
I AM SORRY IT WAS YOUR FRIEND IN PARTICULAR WHO SUFFERED.  


Wade said nothing but gritted his teeth. He was loathe to admit it, but SCP-001's logic made sense, and the fact that it had happened to one of his dearest friends didn't really have any place in the equation.

I PUSHED HIM AS HARD AS I COULD BECAUSE I THOUGHT HE WOULD RESIST.  
AGAIN: I AM NOT PROUD OF THIS.  
AND I AM VERY HAPPY THAT HE SURVIVED.

 _But look at the cost,_ argued Wade despite his incredulity at this feat of mind-reading, as a downcast Mark shuffled back to his place on the gurney in a tshirt and jeans that weren't his own. _This isn't the Mark I know. He's got an audience to keep happy - how do you think he's going to do that, feeling like this?_

THE DIRECTOR HAS A SOLUTION.

Dr. Weller approached the men with a glass each, oblivious of the conversation that had just happened behind his back. "This is a class A amnesiac," he said. "It will make you forget everything that happened here. My guards are already instructed to take you home once you've drunk these. But first Mr. Barnes, please can you write down the address for my guards."

Wade took the notepad and paper and jotted down Mark's address.

"You're suffering from severe post-traumatic stress, Mr. Fischbach," the director told Mark. "The amnesiac will cure it."

"It'll make me forget everything?" he asked a little hauntedly, turning the glass to examine its contents. "Even... even Jay?"

"Yes."

Mark gazed into the distance as if considering something. As he did, Wade handed his address to the director and then picked up his medicine. "Come on Mark, let's drink up. Then we can get out of here."

Mark looked at the director. "Can you do one thing for me?"

"Within reason."

"Say hi to Cassy for me," he said and knocked his drink back.

THE END.


	18. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is the final chapter, people. Remember to comment - I put in a truckload of effort into this and would love a sentence or two to know what you guys think!

Mark couldn't say exactly when awareness came back to him. That was reasonable enough, since the effects of the amnesiac only faded gradually and it was designed to be powerful stuff. However, Mark had always been a fighter, and whenever his mind flickered with momentary awareness he held onto it as best he could. The progression of Mark's return to lucidity over the span of a few hours went something like this:

His arm and ribs hurt a little. Not like he was injured, but as if he had been half-carried for a while and the angles of his helper's elbow and collarbone digging into his flesh had started to hurt. Something brought him to, just for a second, but he wasn't aware enough to know what: the sudden stillness after awkward, constant movement maybe, or the sound of the closing of a door, or the primal sense that he was safe and that it would all be okay, now.

Either way, he drifted back into oblivion.

He gazed at a thing. He knew, deep down, that he should know what it was, but he couldn't place it. All he knew was that it was significant in some way. 

It was a sneaker. That was it.

It was a sneaker on a foot.

That was the significant bit.

He grasped weakly at that idea, trying to work out what it meant. A shoe on a foot... a shoe on a foot. Why was that so important?

Then he had it! There's someone next to me.

He nearly lost awareness then. He floundered in the quicksand that his mind had become before surfacing just for long enough to realise something else: it was a familiar foot. 

_It's somebody I know._

What was more, he knew it was a good somebody, a friendly somebody.

He sank again.

Mark became aware that there was somebody sitting beside him. How long had he known they were there? He turned his head, his thoughts swimming.

Short, dark-brown hair and a beard of similar length. Wade.

Wade stared ahead, apparently unaware that Mark was looking at him. His eyes were dull, his expression slack.

Mark tried to say his name, but only managed a vague grunt before he forgot all about it and got lost again.

Thinking back, Mark couldn't tell when he had become aware that he was at home, sitting on his couch. For a long time he just stared, gazed, blinked and stared, and basked in a vague sense that he was safe. Every now and again he lost his awareness of where he was again, but it kept coming back to him.

Then there was movement beside him. That levered Mark from his lost vagueness and into a state of sluggish lucidity.

Wade leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. He rubbed his face and groaned, “Oh, god. What did we do?”

Mark watched his friend rubbing his eyes and tried to formulate an answer. He didn't get the time however, as Wade stood up and stretched his back. “I feel like I've been sitting forever,” he complained. “What happened?”

“I don't know,” answered Mark. He looked around for clues, but there wasn't much he could go on. There was a pile of laundry over the arm of the couch; half of it was folded. Mark didn't remember doing that. He wasn't convinced he even remembered putting the laundry in the machine to dry in the first place.

Mark stood up – and noticed that he felt very, very tired. Not so much physically, but his brain did: it felt like it had been kneaded like a ball of dough. And left to rise before having the air knocked out of it. And then baked as well, maybe. “Man, I'm exhausted.”

Wade thought about this. “I'm not,” he offered, as if that might help unravel the mystery.

Mark couldn't help but be creeped out by the strangeness of all this. “Is your butt sore?” he joked in an effort to feel more like himself.

Wade was used to hearing this kind of joke from Mark and didn't even flinch. “No Mark, my butt isn't sore.”

Then Mark realised something else was wrong: his clothes felt too baggy. He looked down. “Isn't this one of your shirts?” he asked.

Wade checked the design on the front. “Yeah.” He sounded confused.

Mark hiked up the jeans. “I think these are yours too.”

The two friends looked at each other, but neither seemed to have an idea what this meant. Wade was wearing his own clothes, so it was obvious they hadn't swapped.

“Did we take drugs or something?” Wade asked. “I don't even remember coming here.”

Mark already knew the answer to that one and shook his head. Ever since he had developed his enzyme problem and alcohol had become no-go for him on pain of a heart attack, he had sworn off the drink – and all other drugs too. It just wasn't worth the risk. And anyway, a quick look confirmed that there were no ashtrays or papers around.

Wade checked his watch, and that prompted Mark to look out of the window. It was late; even the long Los Angeles evening was coming to an end as night began to draw in. _How much of today have I lost?_ he wondered.

“Oh, fuck!” Wade exclaimed. “Molly's gonna kill me! Uh, sorry Mark, I've got to go!” Wade pulled out his phone even as he made his way to the front door, and Mark heard him talking as he headed down the apartment block's communal corridor. “Molly? Hi – I'm over at Mark's-”.

All of which left Mark standing on his own, gazing out through his front door at the corridor beyond. After a moment the last trace of vagueness released its grip and he went over and shut the door.

He reviewed again how he felt. His mind felt battered and very much in need of rest. But to go to bed now would be a little early. It was late, but it wasn't _that_ late.

He felt grubby, too. Mark gave his armpits a sniff. Whatever had happened, he'd sweated a lot. Mark paused, then shrugged off this extra dimension to the conundrum and decided that yes, he could do with a shower. If nothing else it would help him to get sleepy and kill some time before heading off to bed.

He went into the bathroom. He turned on the shower and watched the steam build up reassuringly as he stripped. Then he stepped into the shower and dunked his head under the jet. Hot water coursed through his roots and down his face and back, and he smiled at the sensation as he reached blindly for the shower gel. Taking a squirt of it, he lathered up his chest.

Facing blissfully up towards the jet, Mark ran his fingers along the stretch of his abdomen where his scar ran. It tended to get full of lint so he always made sure to clean it out.

His fingers ran straight past it.

That triggered off an odd sense of misgiving in Mark's mind. He knew exactly where his scar was – how could he miss it? He felt for it again. His fingertips glided over unscarred flesh. He frowned into the shower's jet and felt more carefully for it. He couldn't find it.

Mark stepped away from the water so that he could check this out properly. Wiping the soap froth away from his belly, he saw that there was no trace of his scar.

“What the _hell?!_ ”

**Okay, that really is the end now! Like I said in the summary, I'd really appreciate a few words in response to this story - even just a sentence by way of a review. What did you think? What did you like, and what didn't you like?**

**I have got some notes about the villain of this story and what prompted them to capture Mark like this. If you want me to post that, be sure to let me know!**

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first chapter of an 18-chapter story. 
> 
> Show the artist some love: http://bitdraw.deviantart.com/
> 
> Links
> 
> Copyright details for SCP Containment Breach: http://scpcb.gamepedia.com/SCP_Containment_Breach_Wiki:Copyrights  
> SCP Containment Breach game: http://www.scpcbgame.com/  
> SCP Foundation: http://www.scp-wiki.net/  
> Markiplier: https://www.youtube.com/user/markiplierGAME  
> Lordminion777: https://www.youtube.com/user/LordMinion777
> 
> "SCP Containment Breach: Markiplier's Escape" is based on the game "SCP: Containment Breach" and various content from "scp-wiki.net".  
> Copyright details for www.scp-wiki.net/: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/  
> An excerpt from the license in human-readable format (which is linked above) follows:
> 
> You are free to:
> 
> Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format  
>  Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material  
>  for any purpose, even commercially.  
>  The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms.
> 
> Under the following terms:
> 
> Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
> 
> ShareAlike — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original.
> 
> No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.
> 
> Notices:
> 
> You do not have to comply with the license for elements of the material in the public domain or where your use is permitted by an applicable exception or limitation.  
>  No warranties are given. The license may not give you all of the permissions necessary for your intended use. For example, other rights such as publicity, privacy, or moral rights may limit how you use the material.
> 
> ...
> 
> **A NOTE FOR MARK AND WADE**  
> I tried to contact you to request permission to place ads on these videos, but didn't hear back from you. These videos are up because I believe I can raise money for charity, and you have both previously shown a dedication for doing the same. If you would prefer me to take them down, then please ask. If you would like to support the cause in any way, such as by lending your voices to the narration, then again - please get in touch!  
> **END OF NOTE**


End file.
